1986 Toyota Pickup Truck runs then stalls out and won't sta

Engine Mechanical problem
1986 Toyota Pickup 4 cyl Four Wheel Drive Manual 145000+ miles

This is my husband's truck and it starts and runs, then stalls and won't run well upon restart(it starts enough usually to get it home to park it). Truck began doing this about a year and 1/2 ago, but it wasn't really bad and it was looked at by a family member who knows a little about autos(thought it was the distributor cap-replaced it). We don't use the truck much because it isn't reliable (don't want to be stranded somewhere), but used it over the summer to help someone in our family move. It was doing really great. Started up good, stayed running. Everything seemed fine. Then one day as we were driving it just stalled out (as it's done in the past), but this time it just wouldn't start again at all (it's done that one other time only a few hundred feet from our house and we had to push/pull it). This time we tried over and over to start it and finally had to get a ride to get our car and my brother so that he could help us push it. We pushed it back to my MIL house as that's where we had been so it wasn't too far from it. The next day we drove over there to get it and it started up perfectly fine. We would appreciate any ideas. Thanks so much.