two engined truck

The one thing that dad was really good at was being low bid.

No matter what the deal was he could built, make arrange whatever cheaper than any one else. Of course, there are side problems.

Consistently low bid operations are really hard to make profitable, for starters. Dad could make a device to solve a problem and he could make it work fine, but no one else, any where could do the same.

Once he got the idea of trucking gasoline from Southern California to Idaho. He figured where to buy, where to sell and he figured he had enough margin. I have no idea of the actual numbers.

But to do that he bought a tanker trailer. It was 4500 gallons as I remember, and at a little less than 9 pounds a gallon for gasoline, he had a cargo of close to 40,000 pounds. That was not easy in those days.

Dad liked gasoline trucks, only owned one diesel that I remember. He drove Ford F8’s. They were pretty good sized rigs, that could pull that much weight, with the right gears, but not too quickly.

His Ford was an early 1950’s model, as I remember, the ones we call “fat fendered” now. While I was looking for information on old Ford trucks, I found this site: http://fordofwestmemphis.blogspot.com/2009/01/1950-1959-ford-trucks.html. Good information. My best idea now is that the engine was less than 300 ci (in other words small) and had maybe a couple hundred horsepower. My Dodge has 260 HP and it is a pickup!

So he had this truck, and I pulled the trailer. But between LA and Boise there were some really nasty passes and the ford would pull those really slowly. Dad needed a larger truck, but being low bidder, he did not have much margin.

At the same time he had picked up an open cab Dodge military truck. It had a smallish straight 6 engine in it.

So dad took the Dodge apart, and mounted the Dodge engine BEHIND the cab of the Ford. The engine was at a fair angle, so it lined up with a 2nd axle. That made his rig a tandem axle truck. The unique thing was that the tires and wheel on the Dodge were quite a bit smaller than the Ford, so it made an interesting looking rig.

Each had a manual transmission, so he rigged a 2nd set of levers in the cab (along with two clutch pedals and two throttle pedals). All of this made the inside of the truck rather unique, to put it mildly.
One of the most essential gear shifting was going from next to the lowest gear to the lowest, called the granny gear. Miss that one and the ford might not have enough power to start pulling that load again.

To shift dad stuck his left hand through the spokes I the steering wheel to grab the Ford shifter in his left hand, while his right hand was on the Dodge shifter. There was no synchromesh transmissions then, so that shifting was accompanied by some double clutching and some careful work on the throttle.

Dad could make it happen, but I promise you not another living soul could.

I’ll see if I can come up with some pictures.

Tomorrow I’ll tell about the fate of the double engined truck.