Diesel this, diesel that. Monster lifted Jeep, Mega Cab Ram with the 10-inch exhaust pipe. Ford F-450 daily driver and so on, and so forth…the whole big truck thing hurts my head. Some days I get it…like when I found myself checking out a Ford Super Duty with the new V8, a single cab, and an aftermarket flatbed with cargo boxes. Other days, I’m weaving underneath lifted Duramaxes in a car that looks like one of their chock blocks. It’s ridiculous to me because the truck wasn’t supposed to be the #1 daily driver unless it was the only vehicle…it was the second vehicle, the work horse, the beast of burden. The car was comfortable and plush and the truck could drag Texas to Vermont for the winter. That’s how the story should go, but if you’ve followed along with the tow rating wars of the last few years, you’ll know that you’re pushing for a CDL to even put a new one-ton dually to it’s limit.
Lots of people want a big truck. Fine. You want a big truck? Let’s take a page straight from Brian’s playbook: you find a medium-duty truck that was actually built to work it’s ass off. Get it where you want it to be mechanically, make sure it visually makes a statement, and let the neighbors worry. Can that program work with the $5,000 Rough Start constraints? Of course it can! Check out this 1979 Chevrolet C70…366ci V8, air brakes, a five-speed with a two-speed split, tool boxes, air horn, the whole nine yards. This is the ultimate form of a square-body GM truck. And it’s got the Scottsdale package…which we didn’t even know came on C70 trucks! The big flatbed is simple and purposeful. The body is finished off in all black. The only thing we don’t know about is what condition the interior is actually in…but unless it’s suffered a fire and nobody is saying anything, it’s mostly square-body in there. Restoration catalogs can take care of that!
Want to be the biggest dog in the county? Move your backside before Lohnes decides he needs another big-truck fix.
Well there ya go. One of the bugaboos of these trucks are the hydro boost hydraulic brakes, the air brakes solve that. The 366 tall deck truck motor won’t get you anywhere fast but will run forever. And the pattern to split shift the 5 and 2 starts easy and ends up weird but is easy to master.
They could be ordered in a four door cab.