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Love Those Old Trucks!
This backroads tour was postponed twice due to rain. Word got out, and by the time that a pretty weekend rolled around the guest list had outgrown our 55 Chevy 1-ton. We borrowed John Beavers' 54 International R-160. The truck is shown parked at a major intersection in downtown North River Mills, West Virginia.
The legendary rust-free Southern truck. This well-preserved cabover resides near Danielsville, Georgia.
This old Ford cab hides in dense forest near Augusta, West Virginia, but has no running gear under it that may have propelled it there.
Another story lost to the ages . . .
This 1963 F-500 only works twice a year moving cattle over a dirt road between two farms near Capon Bridge, West Virginia. Though in very sturdy shape, the truck always seems to need repairing of some kind before hitting the road. Its maladies are almost always due to lack of use.
I found this farm about thirty years ago when, just barely out of my teens, I explored the Eastern U.S. in a 1955 Chevy Panel. I camped nearby and picked apples until the season ended and I headed for Florida. The Ford was the farm's apple-hauling workhorse then.
The pasture in the background is all that remains of the orchard. The farmer abandoned fruit growing largely due to repeated damage to the trees from the area's very large deer herd. The farm also hosts a 1949 Ford of comparable size, a few Packard automobiles, and old tractors including a Massey Ferguson 50, an Oliver 77 Rowcrop and a Ford TW-10. There are also a lot of newer trucks, tractors and other equipment.
Since other options exist, I suspect that the old truck's twice annual deployments are for reasons sentimental as well as practical..