It’s rough and it’s tough, and it has battle scars, rust and dents. It also has character for days and stories of a lifetime if it were only able to talk. This 1959 Chevy oil field truck is truly neat. Used as wrecker/small crane type unit in the oil fields of west Texas, it has a small block and a stick shift. The handle coming through the floor was likely used to engage the PTO for the crane rig in the back of the thing. While some of the trussing and a boom is back there, the winch and rest of the associated stuff is gone.
The fact that this truck is a short wheelbase one-ton really spins our crank. The dual rear wheels are cool, the tool boxes on the sides of the bed are neat, and the roof mounted lights are the finishing touch that every tough work truck from this era needs.
We’re guessing that this baby came with a 283, perhaps the same one that’s in the truck now. The fan shroud and all of that stuff seems properly sized for the V8 engine as opposed to an inliner powering it down the road. The transmission is likely an SM420, one of the great meat grinders of all time. You won’t be speed shifting the thing but who cares.
If we owned it, we’d clean up the engine bay a little, not touch the outside, add the winch back to the boom end of the business and roll down the road with the windows down and a big smile. Cool truck!
Click here to see the eBay ad for this 1959 Chevy Oilfield Truck
Just a thought, perhaps some taillights.
Just wondering, wouldn’t a 1959 283 have the vent tube coming out off the intake manifold?
It does, it’s just hidden by the radiator hose