[Jacques Reed]

Hi John,

Yes, original unmolested vehicles are extremely rare in Australian. In 25 years associated with these vehicles I have only seen a very few come up for sale. Our Canadian cousins seem to have a lot more original trucks but then they have more of the corrosion issues in their climate. Some of ours found inland are quite sunburnt but with sound steel.

I was told many years ago that after the war the government did not want surplus vehicles competing with the car factories getting back to civilian production. For that reason many bodies were removed before being auctioned off and the vehicles were sold as cab-chassis only. Any vehicle that still had a body attached probably saw post-war service and avoided the earlier cull when finally sold off in the fifties or sixties.

Perhaps someone on the forum who likes to dig into the archives can confirm if this was government policy or just a story that was passed on to me. It does seem plausible based on the lack of original bodies and the abundance of home made cranes, and tray trucks. If farmers removed the bodies after the war I would think there would be some lying around at clearing sales- they never throw anything away, and I have never seen any at a sale.

Still, there are a lot of myths out there so perhaps that was just another one.

Cheers,