The pickup truck is an American icon and from the humblest of beginnings it has evolved into a modern workhorse that can haul family members, cargo, and amazing amounts of weight in comfort. Such was not always the case. For a long time the pickup truck was not much more than a car chassis with a little bed on it. Obviously as the demands of customers changed, so did the capability of the machines that people were selling. Today’s “heavy duty” trucks are on their own level of capability but if you can imagine it, their forefathers were crafted in the years preceding and just past WWII. Heavy truck manufacturers like Mack created rigs like their famed (and short lived) Mack Jr. and the Diamond T company created their own pickup models, the 80 and the 201. This happens to be a 1949 Diamond T 201 truck which was the heavier duty truck of the pair an it is immaculate aside from some little foibles that we’re totally looking past.

Manufactured from 1938-1949 the trucks were all powered by Hercules QX series engines that that means you are looking at an inline six of about 230ci and roughly 65hp. The numbers are pretty horrid when you look at them today but for their time they had some gusto. One of the things to look at on the truck in the ad is the photo below of the leaf spring packs. The thing has more springs stacked up than some dump trucks we see going down the highway! It had yo have ridden like a hay wagon but at the same time it could haul all the weight that the customer wanted to move and back then, the people buying these were farmers, people in construction, or even people who wanted to mount a wrecker unit in the back and use it to haul cars to their service station or junkyard.

As with all trucks of this era, we love the styling. The thick chome bars in the grill and the fenders that are all big and round and seem to go on forever are contrasted by the square and angular features of the bed. The mirror jutting out the side is awesome as is the spartan interior and the scaled down “big truck” wheels. This rig seems to be in amazing shape and the funny thing about the ad is that he said he had a family member clock him going down the road and that the truck actually went 62mph. That kind of rules.

SEE THE PHOTOS AND THEN HIT THE LINK FOR THE DIAMOND T 201 AD –

EBAY LINK: THIS 1949 DIAMOND T 201 IS OLD SCHOOL PERFECTION