Louisville best Aussie Truck in the 70's

Nice one Cam

Bloody Hell Cam, You don't muck around !! I was wondering where my mice got too !

nice cam happy to store one for a few years (ie drive wash etc)for a few years if you have a space issue cheers whale

John, none of the others are all that close to be being able to be registered.
Thanks for the offer though!

[quote author=bigcam link=1410862809/0#0 date=1410862808 A Louisville, the truck that out sold KW 4 to 1 in the 70's. No chassis numbers or rivets here boys, they made that many of these things, and a lot of blokes got a good start in them as well.

Hahaha....the reason Louies sold so well at the time was the huge cash back deal that Fords finance co had going. If you signed on the dotted you would get a shiny new truck, and enough cash to fill the tanks with fuel, pay rego and insurance and make the first lease payment. Some canny operators used this to start up and made a go of it, but many fell by the wayside, lost everything and the biggest seller of Louisvilles in Australia was Esanda. I remember their ads in the Sunday paper trucking section (remember that?) and there were way more repossessed Louies than any other make. There was a time when you couldn't give one away!

[quote author=bigcam link=1410862809/0#0 date=1410862808 A Louisville, the truck that out sold KW 4 to 1 in the 70's. No chassis numbers or rivets here boys, they made that many of these things, and a lot of blokes got a good start in them as well.

Hahaha....the reason Louies sold so well at the time was the huge cash back deal that Fords finance co had going. If you signed on the dotted you would get a shiny new truck, and enough cash to fill the tanks with fuel, pay rego and insurance and make the first lease payment. Some canny operators used this to start up and made a go of it, but many fell by the wayside, lost everything and the biggest seller of Louisvilles in Australia was Esanda. I remember their ads in the Sunday paper trucking section (remember that?) and there were way more repossessed Louies than any other make. There was a time when you couldn't give one away!

Cool, so not only did Ford have the superior truck, they had the superior marketing team. LOL.

In all seriousness, when I started my apprenticeship in 1980, there were a lot of trucks getting repossessed. Denmac was tied up with Esanda pretty heavily, and it wasn't just Louisvilles that were getting stored down the back. Though I'm sure none of them were squeaky clean, I recall a court case Denmac was involved in that had something to do with blokes buying tippers and the work was meant to be guaranteed, I can't recall the exact details. I remember the Sunday Sun (Brisbane) had about 4 pages of truck ads etc, it was the bible in Brisbane before Deals on Wheels came into being.

Hi bigcam .. i reckon those old Louisville's are the bloody bees knees mate....and with all respect they were good and cheap then...and the same applies now

...there is a bloke in Echuca with about 17 of 'em!...have you had a chat with him and swapped a few yarns?......

Hi Detective, yep, I know Rossco.

Well another quick update for the 4 of us who aren't obsessed with KW, haha.
Due to the rigorous maintenance schedule that all farmers give their gear I only had to a few minor things to get the old girl up to scratch. New kingpins, front brakes, treadle valve, relay valve, tailshaft, replaced almost every hose and all the belts, changed the oil filters, pumped 20l of oil into the diffs, cleaned all the breathers out, new windscreen and rubber, rebuilt the Horton fan clutch and probably twice as much I've forgotten about. I put an isolator on the battery's which was a bit fortuitous as one of the positive cables had rubbed through on the tipper hydraulic valve and I wouldn't have spotted it otherwise.

I could smell a bit of burnt wiring in the cab and found a little mouse resort behind the speedo and tacho, how much nutrition is in plastic insulation?

The maiden voyage was to Gatton after a leisurely week and a half of preparation, and what a lovely trip it was with the faint scent of gear oil (from filling the diffs and gearbox) mixed with distillate ( pumped a bit of fuel out of the Reo into the Louey for the trip), the band of 8 up front sounded spot on, put me right in the mood for imbibing the barbed wire when we got out there.

And lastly, an interior shot for Whale, showing the custom steering wheel.

Hi Cam, you got your hands on a 'master-piece' there, the finest customization of all time, judicious use of duct tape around the wheel. : Just to get rid of all them sharp edges from the busted up $hitty plastic used by them 'jokers' who built them EL-CHEAPO "loosely-builts", eh. [smiley=grin.gif][smiley=vrolijk_26.gif]

regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]