Here’s a photo of my two trucks, the ‘92 K1500 and the ‘54 Chevy 3100 (the truck in my blurry profile photo) thats been in my family since new:
While the ‘92 is a pretty recent in the family timeline, the ‘54 was bought new by my great grandfather on my Dad’s side at Wes Landers Chevrolet in Stafford, Kansas in 1954. It was his first new truck after WWII. He also bought a new Massey Ferguson 55 tractor the following year. He ordered the 3100 with the 235, SM420 4-speed and factory overload springs.
It had the factory bed until 1966, when my (then 17 year old) Dad and his younger brother (My 13 year old uncle) were driving out to help my great grandfather in the field. At this time, the truck didn’t have mirrors or turn signals and as they were driving the laser strait highway, far off in the distance behind them was a semi truck. My Dad asked my uncle to keep an eye out to see how close the semi truck was getting. When they were about to turn into the field off the highway and were slowing down and beginning the turn, my Dad asked my uncle to look back one last time to see how close the truck was... just then, as they were turning, the semi clipped the back corner of the Chevy at around 50mph and spun it around a few times and into the ditch. My great grandfather was out working the field, witnessed all this all happen and cut a bee line on the tractor across his freshly turned field to get to the accident figuring his grandsons were either in bad shape or dead.
Somehow, amazingly, both my Dad and Uncle survived that whole thing without a scratch (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this now) but the factory bed on the Chevy was mangled into scrap.
After my great grandfather was reassured my dad and uncle were fine, they had to do something about the Chevy, it needed to be put back to work after all! They spent the next day or two welding up the flatbed frame and cutting the wood for the base and sideboards and that’s how it’s been ever since.
It was in continuous use as a farm truck until about 8 years ago and I drove it daily when I spent the summers back in Kansas with my Grandparents and aunt, uncle and cousins near Independence and Neodesha. Here’s a photo of my Grandad with the truck about 20 years ago. He passed away two years ago at 94 and damn, do I miss him. Thankfully I still have my Grammy who’s doing well at 91!
I grew up near Tacoma, WA and while I wasn’t a pure city kid (we lived on a few acres) spending the summers working with my cousin and uncle on their oil and gas leases, fixing broken equipment constantly and learning how to deal with his cattle and screwing around in the off time riding 4 wheelers, dirt bikes and fishing the ponds was a great way to spend summers growing up!
Unfortunately bone cancer got my uncle in his late ‘50s and soon after that my elderly grandparents moved out to Oregon to live with my Aunt. My Grandfather didn’t know what to do with the truck, so we hauled it out behind a Penske truck (which thankfully was a 3500 equipped with a 360hp L96 6.0 and 6L90 which pulled like a freight train and made getting the 14,000lbs CGVW combined over the passes a breeze at 65mph; we even averaged 12mpg for the whole trip back to WA!) with all of their possessions carefully loaded in the back. I made a deal with my granddad and took up the reigns on the ‘54 from there. I feel damn lucky to be able to keep it in the family. To answer the question: “why don’t you tear off that ugly flatbed and put a factory bed back on?” The answer is “Nope, never gonna happen. With the family history tied to it as well as the usefulness of it, it will always be on the truck as it will always be a work truck, even once I shine it up a bit and fix some of the minor rust. If you can’t haul with it, it looses its purpose in life! Also, it's very cool to look at the flat bed and see the welds my great-grandfather made over a half century ago. There's some connection there as I've worked on and off in the welding industry for awhile. ?
(Beaumont, Kansas, 2014)
This thread has “rambling” in the title for a reason, hopefully y’all don’t mind a side story or two here and there.
Fun fact science corner, the SM420 in the ‘54 and the NV4500 in the ‘92 have two of the lowest first gears of any American light duty truck manual transmissions ever built at 7.05:1 in the SM and 6.34:1 in the NV. That came in handy for tying a loop around the steering wheel, putting the ‘54 in compound low and throwing hay off the back for the cows by yourself. At idle or with the hand throttle barely pulled out, it’s about 3mph ?
