We all have certain “default” search terms that we fall back on while cruising eBay for fun or for actually looking for stuff. One of mine happens to be “wrecker”. I know you’ve just scraped yourself up off the floor after discovering such a shocking fact but it is true. Why would I search that? Mainly so I can torture myself with discoveries like the incredible 1948 International KB5 below. This truck is completely unrestored, has less than 17,000 ORIGINAL miles on it and the wrecker/recovery unit is one of the weirder setups I have ever seen. I don’t mean weird bad, I mean weird and unique.
To start with, there are brand new trucks less clean than this old ’48. Every inch of it seems to be perfect and it was garage kept for many years. That goes without saying, right? Had it been left to the elements out on Long Island, New York the thing would have been reduced to a rusted and sad hulk of a truck. Instead, it is a virtual showpiece just by being itself. The engine is a flathead inline six that won’t hustle this thing down the strip quickly, but will run for 15 year past the end of time. The interior appears to have never been sat in or used and with only 16,000 some original miles, it wasn’t sat in much.
That wrecker unit on the back is one part that I really dig about this thing. It looks like a gantry crane at first but then when you actually see the truck from the back, it has a plate and a set of chains that we’re assuming made up a rudimentary “sling” setup. We’re not sure what the chains did to the front bumpers of the cars being tow to safety or the repair shop but perhaps there were some rubber straps employed at one time as well. Anyone more familiar with this setup, please feel free to chime in and set me straight on how it was supposed to work.
This is a stunning truck, even if you are not a wrecker guy. To think that it is has survived nearly 70 years in this condition is mind blowing and I want to own it more than virtually anyone else in America, but the over $20,000 price tag is pretty steep. You don’t see old KB5 trucks that are in this original condition very often so the guy may get the money but it sure is steep for an workhorse like this truck used to be.
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What a beautiful truck. Seems very reasonable to me
looks like it was designed to be a casket picker-upper then changed to a wrecker
That was my first thought, too. Plus I would have though a Rambler dealer would have used a Nash truck of the same vintage as this unless he got a good deal on this one from a grave service.
I was thinking caskets too but it also could have been used for weight scales like for weighing semi trucks. They use a simular set up to move the counter weights that go in the scales
Looks like the kind of rig they used to deliver concrete ( or steel) septic tanks back in the day. The new ones are much larger but similar. I’ve been around some of those KB-5’s and they were a real horse and ran forever.
That is a truck used for large electric motor pick up & delivery. then at some point cobbled into a wrecker. The top rail would have extended further back and allowed a sliding trolley winch to move back & forth
The chains went under the bumper and down to the front suspension. In the good old days cars had massive chrome bumpers until the plastic crap of today and the chains wouldn’t even mar the old chrome ones.
When I drove our wrecker with a chain type we kept a couple lengths of 4″X 4″ wood on the back of the wrecker. IF the chains started to hit a lower valance or something the wood would be inserted between the chains and the body to prevent bending anything.
Anybody out there have any idea how much weight this rig would haul?