Now & Then : How things have changed with pickup trucks
Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008
During the late 1950 s we had an old 1949 GMC heavy-duty half-ton pickup truck on our farm. To me that old pickup was an example of what a farm truck used to be. Trucks and the reasons for having a truck have changed markedly since then. I'm going to try to describe an old farm truck from the 1940 s and 1950 s, and to make comparisons. I know other people have their own ideas about what makes an old farm truck, and I would enjoy hearing about your memories of old farm trucks.
Until about 1960, half-ton pickups were made primarily for hauling. They weren't stylish, they weren't comfortable, and they weren't peppy or fast. Most pickup trucks of the 1940 s and 1950 s had solid front axles and leaf spring suspensions. So, when you hit a bump, you bounced and absorbed the jolt. The standard transmission was a threespeed manual transmission. Until the late'40 s many pickups had stick shift levers in the floor. By the'50 s most were using shift levers on the steering column. Heavy-duty transmissions usually were "four-inthe-floor. "With a "our-in-thefloor, first gear was extra slow, intended for slow, heavy pulling. We called it Grammaw gear. Our old GMC had Grammaw gear, and even high gear weren't very high. Automatic transmissions, power brakes and power steering were several years away, and pickup drivers never imagined they would ever need such luxuries anyway. Truck seats and floorboards were for carrying tools, oil cans, fence-mending stuff, gloves, boots, rusty bolts, tow chains, medicine for doctoring cows, and so on.
As I recall, the speedometers on the old trucks were made to register a top speed of 80 miles per hour. That was pretty optimistic for an old farm truck. In our'49 GMC, you were sailing right along if you got it up to 45. In the old trucks, a radio and a heater were luxury add-ons. To roll down a window, you had a handy crank on the inside of the door. Electric window closers would have been unthinkable in those days.
Yesterday, I was driving to Rogers in my 1999 pickup, and rain was falling as I passed through the Brush Creek Swoop. I rounded the curve up the hill, and happened to notice that my windshield wipers were operating steadily, even though I was on a steep hill. That wouldn't have happened with an old-time farm truck. Most had vacuumoperated windshield wipers powered by the vacuum created in the engine manifold as the engine gulped in its mix of air and gas. That worked pretty well if you were driving downhill or on the level, but if the engine was laboring uphill, the vacuum would drop. So, driving uphill in a rain in an old farm pickup used to mean that your wipers stalled and you couldn't see where you were going. Sometimes we would let off the gas momentarily, so the wiper could get in a good swipe, then give it the gas again.
Around 1960, truck makers decided that pickup trucks should be stylish, and comfortable and powerful. It was a new day. Trucks were no longer designed just to haul feed and farm supplies; they were outfitted for the highway. Independent suspension and improved springs made for a comfortable ride. Automatic transmissions became prevalent, nicely appointed custom cabs appeared, drive axle gear ratios were tailored for highway cruising rather than for hauling loads of wood over the hill, and powerful high-revving V 8 motors became the norm.
With these changes, pickups gained new reasons for being. People began thinking of trucks as travel vehicles, recreational vehicles; vehicles for seeing and being seen. Especially in eastern Arkansas I saw a new human critter emerge. There appeared the truck-cab farmer, who drives from site to site in his air-conditioned pickup, directing farm operations. Pickup trucks even became identity-supplying possessions. In eastern Arkansas, a hefty pickup towing a cattle trailer and sporting a rifle-laden gun rack across the back window was a status symbol, commanding respect among a man's buddies, so the idea went.
Interestingly, we don't buy trucks today to haul things. OK, we may haul a few things now and then. But we probably buy the truck because of its looks, because of the energy of its performance, or because driving it makes us feel powerful, cool and in control. Our truck is a statement about the kind of person we want people to see us as being.
How things have changed with pickup trucks !
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