Terry Martin (right) of the Olde Fort Sandwich food truck sells a breakfast sandwich Tuesday morning to David Hughes at Firestone Auto Care in Bowling Green.

It’s 7 a.m. on the nose when Terry Martin makes a left turn off Broadway into Firestone Auto Care, angling his 25-year-old Chevrolet truck with nearly half-a-million miles on the odometer in front of the service bays.

A couple honks on the horn let the mechanics know the Olde Fort Sandwich truck is here. Not that there was ever any doubt. Martin has been as dependable as the sunrise since he started delivering hot food, drinks and snacks more than 40 years ago.

Now, with the sun nearly ready to set on Martin’s enterprise, there’s a hint of melancholy in the cool morning air as mechanics David Hughes and Mike Nicholson approach the truck for one of the final times.

Olde Fort, started in 1961 by Ferrell and Sue Froedge and bought from them by Martin in 1977, will make its last deliveries Sept. 21, ending a Bowling Green tradition as old as the iconic Diddle Arena.

“He’s been coming around here since I’ve been here and for a long time before that,” said Nicholson, whose favorite is the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. “He’s been serving us breakfast for a long time.”

Long before the current trend of food trucks that prepare meals on site, Olde Fort was delivering breakfast and lunch to factories, construction sites and businesses like Firestone.

Olde Fort is different, Martin explained, in that the food has always been prepared at a headquarters building, first on Old Louisville Road and eventually at the current site near 12th Avenue and Clay Street. The food is loaded on trucks equipped with propane heaters on the back to keep the sandwiches warm and ice compartments on the side for the drinks.

It was a business model that worked for the Froedges when they started Olde Fort in the first year of President John F. Kennedy’s administration. In an era when Scottsville Road was mostly farmland and fast food was limited to the occasional drive-in eatery, Olde Fort could expect a line of hungry workers at the Diddle Arena construction site and at its other regular stops.

The business grew, eventually running four trucks around the city, and the Froedges hired a 19-year-old Martin in 1971 to help meet the demand. Martin bought out the Froedges six years later, starting a grueling routine that he and business partner L.C. Cosby have continued ever since.

Cosby does most of the cooking, preparing eggs and Sloppy Joes in a skillet that roughly matches the circumference of one of the tires on that Chevy truck.

He arrives each morning at 3:30, and Martin shows up an hour or so later to wrap the sandwiches in aluminum foil, ice down the drinks and load the trucks with snacks.

The two men then head out on separate routes. Customers aren’t as plentiful these days, but Olde Fort still has its share of devoted followers.

“His Sloppy Joe is famous,” said David Meredith, a mechanic at Leachman Buick-GMC who was introduced to Olde Fort in the 1970s. “People at construction sites and factories are all crazy about those Sloppy Joes.”

Meredith remembers paying 40 cents for one of Olde Fort’s signature sandwiches. That price has only inflated to $1.50 today, and Martin says customers can get a sandwich, chips and a drink for four bucks.

“None of their stuff is that expensive,” said Woody Lanham, another longtime customer. “It amazes me that they’re able to prepare so much food and sell it at those prices.”

Lanham, when working as a surveyor for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, would synchronize his schedule with that of the Olde Fort truck just to get one (or two) of those Sloppy Joes.

“I’d always get two Sloppy Joes, two mustards and an RC for breakfast,” recalled Lanham, now retired. “I pretty well knew their routes and would go where I could catch them.”

Customers like Lanham and Meredith are what have kept Martin and Cosby going for four decades.

“I enjoy it,” said Martin, 66. “I liked one year of getting an accounting degree at Western (Kentucky University), but I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed being stuck in an office. I like being outside. You get to see all four seasons, and I enjoy seeing the same people every day.”

Although he puts in long hours, Cosby agrees that he made the right career choice.

“You’re like a bartender,” he said. “You meet so many people, and they want to talk to you. You have a lot of freedom in a job like this. There’s nobody telling you to do this, do that. People in these factories tell me they hate it. I probably would, too.”

Both Cosby, a 70-year-old Vietnam War veteran, and Martin realize that Olde Fort has run its course.

“I thought maybe I could find somebody to take it over,” Martin said, “but nobody is interested in taking over the routes.”

“It is sad,” Cosby said. “But we’ve been doing it for so many years and we’re ready to give it up.”

Longtime customers like Meredith admit to being sad about the demise of Olde Fort even while feeling happy for the retiring owner.

“I’ve eaten a lot of Sloppy Joes from him,” Meredith said of Martin. “Everything he has is pretty good. But I’m not gonna miss the food as much as I’m gonna miss Terry. He has been a part of the Bowling Green scene for so many years.

“But I’m glad for him. He is going to be able to move on and enjoy life.”

The Olde Fort headquarters building has already been leased to a Mexican restaurant, but the retirement of Martin and Cosby and their trucks will leave a void.

Asked how his breakfast routine would change after Olde Fort stops rolling, Firestone’s Nicholson said: “We just won’t get nothing, I guess.”