Pulling a pup (28’) with a tandem tractor

Shhhh! Don’t tell anybody but I did that a few times a while back. Keep it on the down low.

 

Nice looking truck, just too long of a wheel base for me. Guessing it was previously used to haul flatbed stuff with a long overhang like pipes?

 

Being a day cab makes it look long. It’s only a 230 wb. That’s short by todays standards. A 48’’ sleeper would fill it in nice. It pulled grain hoppers and cattle wagons from South Texas up through Montana or Missouri pretty regular in its day. My Uncle didn’t believe in sleeping in a truck.

 

Since it’s “retirement” I pull an old 1950 Fruehauf/Carter 26’ flat bed behind it to soften the ride and give me one more axle of brakes. That little trailer was heavy spec for its day and is 9/16” thick steel with steel deck and weighs 8100 lb. empty! It’s crazy it’s almost 3/4’s of what a 53’ weighs. It has a 32” pin set and the fifth is only 2” behind center. Turns like its not back there.

 

Everything but the wheels, wiring and the tailights. The I-beam axle and 6 spoke hubs are still original. King pin is still riveted in. The air lines are the original 1/2 aluminum tubing to the original air tank. Lines and hoses have been replaced from tank to safety valve and brake chambers. The chambers still have the old bendix-westinghouse stamp on them so i cleaned them up and put new diaphragms in them and replaced the Sealco A-1 safety valve that locks the brakes if air is disconnected. That was a hard one to find but someone in Italy had a nos one on ebay.
I put 22.5 demountable wheels and added the full length side to side bumper to the original center section and added the 3 ICC lights on rear and the extra marker lights on sides. The 3 tailights on each side were done back in the late 80’s. The original setup was one on each side and a single “stop” light in the center. When my uncle brought it down from what was left of the rest of the familys estate in Missouri he had the tailights updated to use it down here on the road.

 

This one is a little closer to original. It’s a ‘47 stainless steel 30 footer that I’m slowly getting roadworthy. It hasn’t been registered for awhile and we’ve used it for equipment storage since this one was brought down. It needs a floor and a king pin plate. The original wood is still 90% in there with a lot of holes and the back 3 ft is rotten away. The 2 outer tailights were added sometime in the past. The original setup was the 2 reflectors outboard and the tail marker and turns were the ones toward the center with the one brake “stop” only light in center. The whole dot bumper was added on. It did not have one originally. The big square pads at the top of them are where another set of rubber dock bumbers went from factory.