Truckster! 27

“Vintage CJ” has to come to mind when you see this photo, and time has modified this folding windshield jeep to give it an “articulating” frame. The lake middle left side is Canandaigua. 

This is a photo from a month ago; by now along this road, snow lies on the grass at the foot of bare trees.

Certainly a seasonal photo of a truckload of Christmas trees coming out of the Adirondacks.

This is the first UPS EV I’ve ever seen, taken recently in lower Manhattan.  Here’s more on UPS’ embrace of new power vehicles. 

Here the second Rivian delivery van I’ve seen in Amazon colors.  It was one of a batch crossing the VZ bridge.  I saw the first one (and batch) leaving a facility about a month ago in Connecticut.   Unless I’m researching this too quickly, Normal IL is the launch point for all these Rivian vehicles.  How far back do electric vehicles go?  Answer at end of this post.

I’ve read references to a food truck revolution.  I had planned to use Buenos Nachos Amigos in a Halloween post, but the time came and went too quickly.  

Here’s an unusual drink truck I saw at a wedding recently . .  a 1933 Ford, just a month ago in a place where snow and sleet are swirling right now.  Maybe working at a food or drink truck truck would be a fun part-time job. 

Hummers certainly attract attention even when they’re painted a sedate color, as this one is not. 

I had to get this photo on a northbound highway.  Is this a Kenworth towing a Hinckley?

It was still summer when I saw this approximately 60-year-old Willys pickup looking like it had just been manufactured.  All restored, it has every bit as much vintage as the lead photo.

All photos in the past few months, WVD, whose truckster! posts represent a lot of fun for me and go back to my demon wanting to make mischief back on April 1, 2015.

Click here for a timeline of EVs.

Drive safe, sober, and clean. 

Might it be fun to do a truck calendar . . . best of truckster! . . . this year . . .    Have you seen an extraordinary vintage truck on your local roads, trails, and highways?  Send me a snap?

Truckster! 25

We’ve updated our incomplete work from yesterday, and hey . .  it’s May, tugster is away, and that makes it a perfect time for another installment of  . . . truckster!  

For starters, how about a 1950 F-1 on the street in Queens!@#!

Along the road on a recent tugster road gallivant and inside the Outer Banks . . . we spotted this 1952 Ford, made to [attempt to] play in a place like the Dismal Swamp maybe.

Speaking of saltwater, this 1952 (?) GMC has been exposed long enough for a sweet patina.

Having slept in a tent recently near a rooster farm, tugster wonders what sound a rusty rooster makes.

Talking patina, he caught this early 1950s Chevrolet in the low-angle morning light, in Washington . . .  NC that is.

There’s patina, and then there’s post-patina, but the guy selling this told tugster he could throw a battery in this CJ and she’d start right up . . .

How about this one from a Great Lakes mariner, spotted not far from Lake Superior?  I’d say a camo Dodge M37?  Under all that snow, there might be a little patina as well.

On another Queens street, tugster saw this and wondered if patina can be translated into Italian . . .  actually patina is the same in English and Italian and you won’t find any here.

And to round this post out, tugster was returning from a Shawngunk hike the other day and saw this beauty, a 1950-something Studebaker, a real beaut.

 

Love the milk can and produce crates in the back?

Thanks to a Great Lakes mariner for sending along that snowy pic;  all the others, WVD, as he prowled the backroads and who thinks that not much says gallivant more clearly than old trucks . . . .  Complete text here by the renegade robots, who want to stress that they met their deadline today.

Chugster 1

Back in 2011 on my way back from my daughter’s wedding in Georgia, I passed through Key West aka the Conch Republic, and while there, of course, I couldn’t help stopping at Fort Jefferson on Dry Tortugas, where here, I wrote about first hearing of “chugs” and seeing one.

Given that and given the fact that in a few days south of the Florida Strait, I saw about one percent of the 60,000 or so vintage US automobiles, many with Soviet pollution-rich but said-to-be economical engines such as Volgas, let me in the spirit of truckster share a few here.   Chug was the sound many of them made, and between the leaded fuel and absence of pollution controls, that chug-chug-chug was palpable.  I’ll identify what I can, but most of my years/makes are guesses.

1949 Chevrolet

 

1950 Chevrolet

 

1940 Chevrolet

 

1950 Buick with 1956 Buick parked behind it

 

1951 Willys modified into small bus

 

1942 Chevrolet

 

Extra points if you guess this brand of truck.  Answer at end of post.   And note the horse/cart hauling sugar cane.

 

1951 Buick

And here we are back to the 1949 Chevrolet, with the

Volga engine, i.e., this is a Cold War hybrid.  Click here for an insightful article which calls Cuba the “Galapagos Islands” of cars. 

More soon, if you wish, before I get back to tugs and other workboats.

All photos taken by Will Van Dorp, with one at least by his camera.

That red truck pulling the chassis with the Hamburg-Sud container is made by China National Heavy Truck Group.  China also supplies many of the modern buses.