WW2 Surplus Trucks

This is why Ive never been able to grasp the huge prices asked for some of these including the 6x6s and Jeeps especially, there were obviously millions of them built and even with war and the passage of time must be millions of them left.

When the NATO reserve was sold up,there were thousands of unused GMC 6x6 trucks cut up for the drive axle ends with wheels and tyres to make Asian farm trailers .....guy I know has a couple of trucks from the French reserve......sold for scrap price,but by the time he got them in his backyard the cost was around $12,000 each.

WW2 trucks are comparatively cheap in Europe. The main reason being anyone in cities has nowhere to park them plus the cost of fuel.A good club GMC can be bought for under $AU20,000 but on the other hand jeeps are double what they are here. Dodges are in the 20-30,000 price range as here.The French Military Vehicle Club in Paris is lucky as they have been given rent free three 100 metre long warehouses on an old military base right near town. Each member can store and work on his vehicles and everybody has their workbenches set up in allocated bays. As a result they have a lot of big stuff. There are still some very big dealers in Europe with hundreds of acres of WW2 stuff parked in the grass.

Strangely the tiny country of Holland has the most collectors with really heavy vehicles tanks, transporters, heavy wreckers. All the Canadian equipment was sold in Holland post-war and they had vehicle parks similar to the French areas mentioned above in the thread. Of course the Canadians had thousands of Blitz as well as the GMC etc fleet. This is the Deelan disposal yard.









The Poms also had vast sales

I know a bloke who bought one of those Jeeps, in England. Maurice Wilks, that turned out pretty well for him and some of us. :whistle:

Lang, you mentioned Bandiana, Survey Corps, did you ever meet Anthony Stephens? I reckon he was a sergeant around about 1970, while at Fortuna, ended up as a Captain by the time the Survey Corps was disbanded . . . Now owns/runs The Map Shop in Adelaide.

There is a very good chance I did meet and even work with him. Survey and Aviation were pretty small Corps back in the day (Survey is no longer and Aviation is huge now) We spent a lot of time supporting the surveyors.

Jobs I can remember from 69-79 to put to him are:
Aerodist, Terrain Profiling and Photography jobs in the Queenair and Porter.. PNG, Sumatra, Guadalcanal Irian Jaya, Woomera, Borneo. I was flying the second Queenair out of Albury when Ferguson crashed the other one at Shepparton killing himself and 3 others, he would remember that.

Lang

Maurice Wilks did a great job of making the Land-Rover but from there it went downhill until it was an unreliable and outdated vehicle.

If only some real money had been spent on updating them they would have been more successful.

Lang: Apparently he only was involved with choppers, or the occasional Pilatus Porter, and said you were obviously involved in survey work, as against him being cartography based.



He said he remembered the Shepparton crash well, and vaguely recalled 171/173, 161/163 or something like that???

Yes Squadron numbers are right.

He must have been on the receiving end of all the tapes, printouts and photos we came back with. People said "Why make maps for the Indonesian Army?" Because if we ever go to war with them we will have all the original photos, survey data and original map printing plates.

Interestingly he was in Canberra when the Indonesian maps were presented to their Army.

Later contact with Indonesian Army denied there were any such maps. :blink:

Really? :whistle: