Hi All, occasional lurker finally stepping up to the plate.
Some of you may have seen my truck on the cover of the March issue of
Double Clutch magazine from the Antique Truck Club of America, or seen it at a variety of shows up and down the east coast.
My 61 GMC has just ticked over to 50k original miles. I bought it with 41,629 miles in 1999 from the original owner. I have every piece of documentation, from the original correspondence between the owner and the selling dealer. The gentleman bought the truck to put his camper in the bed, and had Morysville tool boxes hung on the sides in place of the fenders. GM and Firestone custom engineered a dual rear wheel set (has 19.5" wheels). The tool boxes were lined with a piece of vinyl and never saw anything other than clothes, food, household supplies, and some minimal road trip repair parts. You could literally eat out of the tool boxes! The previous owner provided me with a boatload of records-- I have every insurance card and registration from 1961, and every other piece of possible documentation, including correspondence and drawings from GMC and Firestone on the dual rear wheel setup.
The truck was garage kept and remains as such. It is nearly perfect, but certainly as perfect as any 56 year old truck could possibly be. I believe all of the paint to be original-- except the wheels, which I just repainted this winter to match as the rears were peeling.
The truck is incredibly reliable. Last September, I went to a truck show in North Carolina with the 61 on the back of the trailer along with a few other trucks. My haul truck, a 1965 White 4000 diesel tractor, blew a head gasket halfway from NJ to NC, so I unloaded the 61 GMC and drove her down the rest of the day, and all the way back home to NJ, a total of about 1100 miles, on some of the hottest days of the year.
Anyway, just happy to share these photos. I'll be bringing "Blueberry" around the show circuit this summer to celebrate the feature article in
Double Clutch.
Here's a photo of the 61 outside a farm stand in North Carolina. Incidentally, I lost a hubcap recently so if anyone knows where I can find the larger 3/4 Ton hub caps for a '61, please let me know!
Ross
