Red Horse

As for the lawsuits, I have to believe they will have an uphill fight. One of the plaintiffs is a union. Duh! While I always hoped Navistar would make it, was I skeptical on their approach? I certainly think so-at least I wasn't going to put a pile of money on their idea as the only thing I kept thinking as they went down their EGR road was..."hmmnn-what does Volvo, Cummins, Daimler know that Navistar doesn't". Like I said, hoped they would make it but anyone who bet big on them should realistically have known what the odds were-or better yet, that the technical minds of these other companies had other ideas.

More trouble for Navistar. Several suits filed over failed EGR program. Allegation that Navistar misled investors to prop up stock price. As always a win-win for the legal community.

You NY/Vt guys probably know Gorman Bros out of Albany. I was in their Albany yard say 5-10 years ago and noticed a large pile of "scrap". It was a milling machine. They were out on a job and hit a gas line. Operator saw it and managed to get off the machine before it blew. The job had been marked but the story was the gas line was a directional drill job and apparently when they bored it, they hit some hard material and the line took path of least resistance and "bumped up" enough to get in the critical zone. Boom!

Checked out the BC-now that was a rare truck. the B-180 was a 61. I also saw your Ford TLB. we had an 801 that had an Eranco driving front axle. that was a rare site in the 60's, was a 4 speed with a shuttle stick. Had a 14' back hoe on it. Good little machine-for its time.

I drove a B-180 dump in the early 60's when I was in school. that was series before Loadstars. V-345, 5 spd, 2 spd rear, juice brakes. factory GVW of 24,000 lbs. I would routinely CARRY 12 ton of asphalt or graded base! trans had square gears but I drove it like it was a 10 spd, split shifting and the 345 would FLY! Great motor!

Paul, Just saw it on 10 O'clock news. ??? looks like level ground? Load frozen on one side???

I don't think the M was necessarily a driving front axle. If my memory is right, it had the same R cab as an F-230 but I think it did not have a setback axle and the hood was a bit shorter.

That Matt is good logic. Bad enough that you have a road failure-Worse when the dealer says..."Can't fit you in the shop till next week"

Thx for your comments. I just hope Ford has some good performance/oversight language in place. Think of the risk. Navistar is supposed to keep cranking out a quality product while Ford gears up to fight them again head on- in class 6 and 7 and probably vocational class 8 too.

Nice- I was working for a developer in Conn. in early 60's. We had an 801 Ford with a shuttle stick and an Eranco driving front axle. In those days a 4WD TLB was a rare thing. Drive shaft for the axle came out the side of the trans case on the left side, then under the foot rest to the left side of the axle. The tractor was red/gray but we had a new 14' hoe that was cream color with red ford Script. iittle devil would do a lot of work. I found a B & W picture, I'll see if I can get one of my kids to scan. Took about 5 minutes to put the hoe on or off.

So KSC, what do you think this new guy's view of Bluediamond is? As Ford was International's main competition in class 7 and a worthy competitor in 8, I can't see how they will run the risk that Ford could again be viable. Before the 6.0 "divorce", they had a good mutually beneficial relationship but now-different story.

As to who built the CL cab, it was Sheller Globe.

Very good Bryan. The truck was parked on Rt 70 for the longest time-I finally stopped one day to look at it and found out who owned it. Talked to Mike for 45 min and found out it was far more truck than I could afford-told Mike ..."its a shame its just sitting here". His response was- "yah I want to do it" About two years later it showed up at Hudson show-a beautiful job!

Hah-not sure if I remember that one- I only was involved with the "other side" fleet from sometime in 90 to end of 93.

10-4 on the well. final bill on that one was big 7 figures! I think there were 7 municipal wells in that wetland. Miracle there was no fire- One bit of collateral damage- about 3 days after, clean up contractor was delivering stone with a beautiful Superliner pulling trailer dump-you guessed it-dump went over and nailed the cab-miracle driver wasn't killed.

The city of Worcester tractor is now Mike Trotto's B 81!

If nothing else, green will save you a few bucks too!

Matt, He did have an older R Model too as BK noted-not sure if it was a 750 on it -but the trucks were always inside-I'm sure these were clean units. Nice shot of the Plunske truck- when we were kids we used to drive up rt 5 to see all the red Fords parked in a row-he had a couple of nice Super Dutys too-as in F-950 Super Duty not F-350 Super Duty. Wonder what became of those- I saw he had a clean 70's 750 for sale a while ago. I can't imagine how these guys pay off these new monsters-then again, I think that CH Coady is selling has over 200,000 on it and its not that old- good utilization-then again they don't work cheap-ask your dad if he remembers when we rolled one of the new CH's over on I-93 in like 1991. Coady's bill for that was over 10 grand.

Had to go to Conn today and was surprised to see Red-Arts Garage with the signs all gone and the place cleaned out. In the back of my mind I thought I saw the old Brockway wrecker recently posted someplace so can't say I was surprised. Seems like it was yesterday and these were the guys who handled the wrecks on 84 from say Manchester to the Mass line-with their old single axle "hooks". Then again, the business has changed. If anyone saw any of the coverage last week of the recovery operation when the bus carrying the U-Maine girls basketball team went off 95. Coady had TWO big boom wreckers on scene-$$$$$$$$$ (Seems like one would have been sufficient) . One of those CH Macks is currently on sale on eBay for 350 thou!

No clue-that was two or three years ago-never saw it again.

Matt- Al DeLeo?

Sounds like you have your mind made up but just for kicks take a look at ..Vintagewiringofmaine.com website. Impressive but I hear the product is first rate.

On another note, they did recently announce they were coming out with a cab over (like the Sterling Condor-actually looks like a Condor) which would be a competitor of the Mack TerraPro (MR), "Autocar" (old White Expeditor) but in any case, aligning yourself with a particular body builder excludes you from the whole pool. Didn't they do the same thing with mixers in the last year or so? An even dumber move IMO. Rear discharge mixers are yesterday's newspaper. While I'm sure there might be some jobs that make sense-like you are pouring a huge job and you just back up to a big concrete pump and blow the load out- for the most part, front discharge mixers rule. Most contractors don't WANT rear discharge mixers on their jobsites. I wheeled my share of concrete off the back of LJ's and B-81's in my youth. Today?-I was pouring 8 sono tubes at our fairgrounds not long ago- front discharge mixer took no more than five minutes! Driver never left the cab until he got out to wash the chutes! Kiss the rear discharge mixer business goodbye!

Interesting. Given Navistar's financial position-it's not the best correct??- and given the hole they are trying to dig out of with respect to their EGR issue, I would have to wonder if this makes sense. While we often read about companies divesting of assets when the going gets rough to ...."focus on their core business", I have to scratch my head on this one. Here is a case where Navistar is spending money on something that MIGHT make sense- if all things considered the rest of their house was in complete order.

Here are a couple of beauties currently at Gargolinski's in Sterling