wrote

OK, if you want to break it down that way, I will agree with you all
day long that today's vehicles are nothing more than cars without back
seats.

I have had three trucks that were real trucks. My '59 Ford 3/4 ton
with a six speed manual transmission. You could pull the balls of a
rhino with that thing.

#2 would be a '75 GMC one ton dual axle. It had a four speed manual
transmission, 2" tube steel framing for ladders and scaffolding welded
onto the frame that extended bumper to bumper. Since it had a flat,
short dock height float bed instead of a truck bed on it, I had tool
boxes welded to the bed behind the cab.

You could carry 4 guys, load it with a lift of sheetrock, add all the
tools needed, and still pull a skid steer loader all at the same
time. At the end of the day, you took the mats out and hosed out the
interior to get out the mud, dirt, spilled coffee and soda, dropped
cigarettes, etc. I bought that truck second hand, and it was a beast.

The last really honest to Pete truck I had was a '76 3/4 ton Chevy. I
didn't like it at the time because it wasn't as powerful or sturdy as
my old '59, which finally just fell apart. In the end, it did
everything that was asked of it reliably and with no fuss.

Those were the days.


Let me wipe a tear from my eye when talking about the good ole trucks that
earned their keep and built america.

Where I grew up, we had a lot of poor farmers and loggers. What we used to
do with all kinds of old trucks was to cut of the body and shorten the
frame. Put on some big tires, maybe a winch and make ourselves a home made
tractor. One of the primary functions of this home made tractor was to pull
out our regular tractor when it got into trouble.

Many of them were pretty funky in appearance. We welded on a seat from an
old horse drawn wagon onto ours. Big metal leaf spring type affair with a
seat that had holes to drain the rain water. Our neighbor just had a big
chink of wood for his seat.

Nothing fancy. No cab, no air conditioning. no seats, etc. Often we put
some pig iron or other weights on it. Quick and dirty to build. But these
things saved our asses and other equipment again and again. And one of the
reason why we could get away with it was because we were building it out of
something that was quite substantial to begin with.

I can't imagine building anything like this out of the contemporary, pretty
boys trucks.