IH Australia truck manufacture - Official opening

G'day all! - Just an interesting full page article here, from the Power Farming magazine of July 1952, giving a write-up about the official opening of Australian IH truck production at the Dandenong factory.

It's interesting to note that despite being called "Australian-built trucks" .. they still had a % of U.S.-sourced parts content. The write-up states that IH "intends to increase the content further, towards complete local manufacture". It would be interesting to know which parts were still U.S.-sourced in 1952. Transmissions and rear axles?

I wonder how many of those 500 Dandenong workers are still alive? Any left, would almost certainly be in their very late 70's, at least. Like WW2 veterans, they will very soon, all be gone.

I think it was around 80% to be classed as Australian made ie the AR160 and similar trucks got the A prefix but not the R 190 even with the Aussie cab. Parts bought in from Commonwealth countries eg Canada and UK were subject to more favorable treatment.
When doing the ACCO book I tracked down two old IH employees who were there in the 50s and much of the info in those first chapters came from them. Always keen to talk to anyone from that era, if anyone knows anyone who worked there in the 50s, 60s or 70s drop me a PM and I will be in touch.
These old blokes have an amazing knowledge of engineering, learned mostly by trail and error and the current crop of university trained graduates are not in the same league.

I was quite interested in the figure of

JuanTrak
GuddayM8

Interesting Subject


Would image in 1952 Dandenong was a large country town out side of Melbourne with the IH factory on the Sth East outskirts of Dandy
Now more like middle suburbia now

http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/NAAMedia/ShowImage.asp?B=11793097&T=P&S=1
A section of the recently completed truck cab building at the Dandenong, Victoria, works of the International Harvester Company of Australia Pty. Ltd

ButEyeDoSt&2BCorrected
Cya
[ch9787]