Stuff like this is the reason we never leave home without our camera. We were cruising to a cookout on Labor Day weekend when we rolled by a small fire station and spotted this neat Dodge LCF. After we performed a J-turn and our wife stopped screaming, we proceeded to ogle the big and pretty rare Dodge.

Lots of people forget that Dodge was in the commerical truck market up until the middle 1970s. The LCF (Low Cab Forward) trucks, sometimes called the C-Series, were introduced in 1960, and in the stylistic sense were frozen in time. The only change came in 1968 when the trucks went from dual lights to single headlights. This one is a single headlight truck so we can assume it was built some time after 1969.

In talking to a guy who lives in the town where the truck is located (Millville, Massachusetts) this was an old jet fuel tanker that the fire department got its mitts on. There are probably a myriad of fire fighting uses for a truck with a big tank and a pump on it, we’re just blanking on any specific ones at this point.

Back to the trucks. One of the neatest features of these big boys is the front fenders. There are actually piano hinges running up and down both sides of the grill and a latch at the rear of the fender near the door of the cab. The latch can be undone and the fenders hinge all the way forward, allowing a mechanic to literally walk up to the engine and service it! Pretty cool design.

Lastly, you can see in the photo that this is a diesel truck, at least by the fender callouts. The gasoline motors for these trucks ranged from Poly 318s up to the most powerful gasser, which was a 413ci V8. This truck may be equipped with a Cummins, Detroit, or Caterpillar engine depending on the exact year and which was selected. Since we weren’t technically where we were supposed to be zapping the photos we didn’t want to climb up under the truck to ID the motor. An annoyed wife in the truck is better than an angry one at the bail window…ask us how we know.

These trucks are rarely seen in person so if you get the chance, definitely take some time to check one of these forgotten workhorses out