Oh if this truck could talk! Thanks to our man Stiney we were alerted to the sale of this awesome 1956 Chevy 8100 truck which has been converted to a plowing rig on a Michigan farm. This thing has likely lived about 100 lives in the nearly 60 years it has been on the planet. There is no telling how many different types of cargo it has hauled, how many different people it has been owned by, how many states it has traveled through, and how many hundreds of yards of snow it has bulldozed around this guy’s farm. Equipped with a big hunk of concrete where the fifth wheel should normally be and tire chains for extra traction, this thing is literally a bulldozer on wheels.
Power comes from a 350 Chevy that looks to be about as greasy bone stock as is possible. The transmission is a 10-speed, or from what we’re gathering a five speed with a high and low range rear axle. We’re guessing it is a Clark transmission but that is 100% speculation on our part. The low range would certainly be handy when driving snow piles back into the hinterlands of a Michigan (or Massachusetts!) winter. The interior is not pretty but is it is intact and all there.
The plow is ancient and it looks like an old Meyer if our eyes are correct. There is no power angle function that we can see, just power up and down. There is a hydraulic reservoir in the passenger compartment, a joystick style controller, and, well that’s about it.
The seller says something that some of your non-truck obsessed BangShifters may laugh at and that is the fact that the truck is rare. The thing is, he’s right. As I have lamented more times than I care to admit on these electronic pages, old trucks like this one did not usually survive their working lives. Wrecks, failures, and being picked clean for parts were how most of them went out. As they were money making machines, preservation was not top of the list stuff. The idea was to work them until they were dead, pick the carcass, and replace. The fact that this one made it out and is still in working order? Magical!
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CL LINK: 1956 CHEVY 8100 RIG PLOW TRUCK
yes I did laugh, at the pure joy of seeing this creature – I really dig that auxillary heater
I see an air gauge, so it must have had air brakes at one time. Has a dual circuit master cylinder and power booster now, and dig the one line just bent over and closed off. As short as it is, I wonder if it was once a mobile home toter.