[Ken Smith]

I am having a break from driving to Roma Qld every weekend, to help family out there, it is too wet to do any farming and too cold to work in the shed, so I thought I would sort out my 8 Studebaker ARNs, plus the 2 that I dismantled.

Out of the 8 only 4 have matching chassis number plates and dash nomenclature plates. I have been documenting dates of delivery, ARNs etc. to make it easier to check the large number of photos that are being put on fb and the forums these days.

This has all been made easier with the work Darryl Jones did for this forum with his documentation of all the Australian Studebaker and Reo trucks.

I would like to confirm Darryl ARN 144487 is chassis number 43516X. I have this 1943 Studebaker with the correct ARN and it's USA number on the bonnet. It doesn't have the nomenclature plates, somebody put lovely, neat, chrome strips across that part of the dash, but it does have the chassis plate.

I also have a chassis plate 95315 which which came off a bare chassis, that was at Prices Spare Parts and was being sent to Ken Hughes at Kingaroy for scrap. That chassis number doesn't appear in the ARNs.

One of the things that I have noticed as I go though the AWM books is the 123 Studebakers, ARN 169000 to 169122 that have post war British registration numbers. I am guessing, not assuming these trucks must have been delivered to the British Army first. Did they actually go to Britain and get registration numbers stamped on the packing box or the trucks assembled and registered and then sent to Australia? Britain would have had to have had something to do with them, to allot them registration numbers. It must have meant something special for the Australian Army ledger keeper, make note of them all.
There are a lot of trucks where the USA number is noted and I do assume that these trucks were delivered to the US Army and, then lend leased to Russia, but sent to Australia as the war came to a close in Europe. Those trucks didn't come with Russian registration numbers though, is the point I am trying to clear up.
I can't find anywhere this has been discussed before, but I would be interested to read if it has.
Cheers Ken