History Great depression homemade trucks

In the late 60's there was this old guy that did lawn mowing in the area and you would see him all over with a lawnmower and tools stuffed in the trunk of a 30/31 A coupe, he would stop for dinner at the little luncheonette in our Safeway store (remember those), they would even let you pick out a steak in the meat department and grill it for you for?$$.
I went by it many times walking home from Jr. High and always found it so odd.

 

I’ve seen pictures of some 50s and 60s cars homemade into pickups. There was an old man in my town when I was a young boy who had a 1960 Chevy station wagon cut down to a pickup. The back of the “cab” was made of wood.

 

In my country that wasn't a myth, it happened, farm vehicles got extra rations, sedan and coupe got just 1 gallon per month.

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Friend in high school bought a super clean 40 Ford coupe with a Sears accessory bed like that. It was pretty well designed, able to remove it and put the trunk lid back on without external evidence it was ever there.


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Two years ago at Hershey a guy had a nos kit for a mid '30's Dodge Brothers coupe, complete with instruction booklet.

 

Rolls Royce

 

Another


I would imagine that these were either 1930s pre WW2 or post war conversions, new vehicles were impossible to obtain in the UK as the majority of manufacturing output was exported to pay for WW2, which I believe th UK have only just finished paying for.

 

The Theiman tractor was made of a model a drive train and chassis with a heavy chain drive to the rear wheels. Neighbor had one, put a flat head v8 in it,!

 

Back about 1966, I was bugging my Dad to put a small block in his ‘30 A roadster. He said no way, but we got this ‘32 pickupized Victoria ; and being the Ford guy that he was... stuck a 289”in it. Real fun truck, but it had a habit of blowing’39 trannys.

 

When I was a young tyke (probably around 1967), my grandfather took me for lunch at the Safetyway lunch counter. There was a hand-lettered sign saying that they'd cook a steak for a dollar over the steak price. As I recall, you got a baked potato and side salad with it. I think I had a burger...

 

Worked at Pete's Esso in high school, 1970-1971. We had a customer who had a model A, a tree had fallen on the back of the sedan body, He converted it to a pickup. He was a bit of a character, bought a 56 Lincoln sedan new, in 1971
it had never felt water. He only drove it on sunny days, dusted it off. Car was a pig to drive, no power steering. He should have bought a continental.

 

...have always liked those car/trucks, would like to build one;..here's a "board"I did of a few...

 

My Avatar. Found it in a chicken house in West Va.

 

My granddad had a Texaco station and a bulk route in western Minnesota during WW-2. Some of the farmers he delivered to had more coupons for tractor gas than they could use, so they returned them to him. He also sold used cars he picked up from dealers in the Twin Cities, one was a Checker cab. He cut the Checker into a truck, then added a Holms boom, and a gallon can he kept regular gas in - ran it off of tractor gas! In winter, he would warm it up on regular, then switch it over. Kept a half-pint under the seat, for those winter nights he was called out to pull a drunk out of a ditch or a snow bank! I dunno if Grandma ever took a snapshot of it...

 

theres just something so awesome about a sedan or coupe cut into a truck... the ways of utility back then were amazing

 

The Great Depression and WWII gas rationing are two different things. During the depression all sorts of home-built vehicles hit the road, California or Bust style. Further, gas rationing (combined with a national speed limit of just 35mph) during WWII were done primarily to conserve rubber, not fuel. (Edited)



Class A drivers: Three gallons of gas per week.

Class B: Factory workers and traveling salesmen, eight gallons per week.

Class C: Essential war workers, such as police, doctors and postal carriers, no limit.

Class T: Truck drivers, no limit.

Class X: Politicians and other “important people,” no limit.

 

No. Driving a pickup did not get you unlimited fuel. The occupation of truck driver was what qualified you for a class T ration card. And since the card listed the vehicle, you couldn't use your truck's class T card to gas up your car.

 

one of the coolest car/trucks I saw was in a Wisconsin boneyard years ago, it was a 50 Chevy tudor with the back of the "cab" made by welding two 39-46 Chevy truck doors together at the door handle edge, it fit pretty nice and had the roll-down back window feature that we all like today.

 

Not all of these were depression conversions. A running vehicle hit in the rear still makes a good truck conversion. There were still plenty of resourceful folks that didn't have much $ after the depression was over. how many wood flat bed 60's-80's truck have you seen running around.

Some of these may have never left the farm after converted, just hauled around the property.

 

I sit corrected then... but I heard quite a few tales from Great Uncles who were farmers who said getting a T sticker wasn't a problem for them in their old Ford coupes with beds in place of trunk lids. Hence, my (miss)understanding...

 

A couple take aways from this thread..... NO MATTER how bad you feel things are, they were never as BAD as our fore fathers had it. You can only imagine how bad things really were for them. Never ever complain, just enjoy every day for what it is. Happy Holidays.

 

A lot of those car-to-pickup-bed conversions were done during (and shortly after) WW II because you couldn't buy a new (and hence, used) pickup during the war, so...make do with what you have. After post-war production ramped up, a Model A (or similar) were just worn out used cars that didn't have much value, so why not cut them up and get more use out of them. The world was not yet a throw away mentality at that point in time.

 

I recently pickup a 1932 plymouth, was told it was a pb. I'm happy to find this forum and find out it was probably cut up further back then I thought . Currently in process of bringing it back to truck cab. As I am building it I'm thinking how I would have done it back in the 30s.

 

Carries the same pay load as the average Dodge, 1/4the price and a 1/4 the gas mileage.