It’s been too long since we had us a really nice old truck. Nifticus found this Fargo (Canadian Dodge) on the street in Vancouver, looking like it’s still being used. That’s how we like to see them.
I’m guessing at the exact year, as my truck Encyclopedia doesn’t have Fargos, and the trim on their front ends is a bit different. But it’s probably close, although I’m not sure Fargo adopted the all-new Dodge look in 1948, or a year or two later, like it was the case sometimes.
We can be sure it had one of the venerable Chrysler flat head sixes under its hood, and likely still does. Very nice old truck. I needed that.
I think we all needed that. Nice!
Did the U.S. (or Canada, in this case) build a bad truck in the 1940s? If someone gave me a wad of cash and told me to go out and buy a 1940s pickup, the choice would be almost excruciating. Ford? Chevy? GMC? Dodge? International? Studebaker? I could imagine being equally happy in any of them, and I am probably leaving out a few.
I have lately been kind of enamored by Stude trucks (which seem to outnumber Stude cars for sale in my area) but this puts me in a Dodge mood now.
Not really, JP. They were all rugged, reliable and pleasant looking. All great unless you were in a hurry. 😉
How about a Hudson, just to be different? 🙂
Beautiful truck. I’m curious though – where do you get replacements for wear items like ball joints, brake shoes, and the like?
Lokki, these trucks didn’t have ball joints. That had straight axles with king pins and grease fittings. They are incredibly long-lived if greased regularly.
Mechanical bits for these trucks (and MoPaR cars) of the same era (approximately 1940-1953) are much easier to find than you might think. Major components changed very little in that period and there was a great deal of interchangeability all across the board.
I was able to buy a complete tune up kit (points, condenser, distributor cap and rotor) for my 1948 Dodge coupe at my local auto parts store last Spring. They had everything on the shelf partly because these engines were used in industrial and agricultural applications for decades after they were fazed out of cars and trucks.
There are also a number of specialty suppliers out there for these old things that have lots of parts at surprisingly reasonable prices. My Dodge….
Nice Dodge. Fluid Drive for the win!
Thanx, JP. It’s a 70,000 original mile unrestored car and I LOVE my Fluid Drive, 🙂
That is a very nice car. How does Fluid Drive compare to driving a vintage full automatic? Was Fluid Drive competitive enough to carry Chrysler through 1952?
My dad had a 1949 Windsor with Fluid Drive and compared to early automatics like Powerglide, in my opinion it was superior, mainly due to the simplicity of the design. For urban driving, all one needs to do is keep the car in second gear. There is enough torque and slippage for the car to pick up nicely, and there is no problem keeping up with most modern traffic, except perhaps Oak Street in Vancouver….
I have never seen this truck, and by the looks of the area, it’s very near where I live.
Dave, some people consider that Fluid Drive was obsolete the day it debuted in 1940. Remember that was the same year that Oldsmobile introduced the Hydramatic, one of the best full automatics ever. Although the earliest examples had some problems, it didn’t take long for GM to sort them out. One big advantage that the first Fluid Drives had over the full autos was that it was much less expensive for Chrysler to produce and hence, sell. It was also cheaper to repair than the GM tranny, should anything ever go wrong with it.
The name “Fluid Drive” actually referred only to the fluid coupling that took the place of the flywheel. Without getting too deep into the weeds here, Chrysler used it with a number of different transmissions between 1940 and 1953. All still still had a clutch pedal. They introduced their first full auto, the two speed Powerflite, in 1954.
Chryslers and DeSotos used a dual range two speed Fluid Drive system that could develop issues with various vacuum and electric components as they aged. My Dodge has none of that. It’s a simple three-on-the-tree with a clutch and the fluid coupling. It eliminates about 85% of shifting. I pull away in second and upshift to third at about 15 m.p.h., using the clutch. I can sit at a stoplight with the car in any gear and my foot off the clutch pedal.
That’s one fine looking machine. Amazing how low the mileage is and it’s original condition looks almost like new. VW used the auto stick up into the mid 70’s on the Beetle. It had a servo that worked the clutch through contact points under the shifter, so no pedal but had a torque converter and a 3 speed gearbox (4 speed with 1st gear removed). It worked the same way as your fluid drive except the clutch was operated automatically. 2nd gear was used around town and one shift to 3rd around 45 mph was for freeway driving. 1st was for steep hills. It could be driven with all 3 gears for a little better acceleration. it was a fairly reliable simple system if you did not rest your hand on the shifter which would disengage the clutch.
Thanx, 67 Conti. It was stored for about 25 years and never saw a New England winter despite spending it’s entire life in Maine and Massachusetts. It’s completely free of rust.
And I remember the VW Auto-stick.
Nice license plate as well
Thanx, Teddy.
Well from 42 to 45 they were probably olive drab or navy blue if you found them at all. Cars and trucks were parts bin products in 46 and rapid development thereafter. The trucks didn’t change much though during the second half of the forties. The customer during the war only cared that they work and they didn’t change much when the war was over. Honest work vehicles. Ya gotta luv em. That era produced my first two vehicles, a 47 Stude followed by a 46 Chev. Not teen proof which I found strange but they were both over 10 years old.
More specifically, this generation of Dodge truck first hit the street in 1939 and survived practically unchanged until the Pilot House series arrived in 1948. I strongly suspect that this was also the case for Fargo. I’ve not seen enough trucks of this series to be able to tell a late one from an early one.
Yes, these Fargos were virtually unchanged through their entire run. They were some of the most distinct Fargos ever produced, with a different front center panel they shared with the pre-war Plymouth pickups. When the pilot house models debuted, the only difference was the lettering and badge.
What a great ol’ truck!!
Geez, after that Mustang that’s exactly what I needed. Something with purposeful style. Too bad no interior shot, a big bakelite steering wheel would have been nice this morning too.
I read some where that FARGO was chosen because they could use the same letter mounting holes as DODGE
Lovely looking truck indeed and I wonder what engine it could have? Cannot tell if those are historic vehicle plates, but I know for certain I would be a bit uneasy driving behind this with the loose cargo on the load floor.
Depending on the year, this truck would have been equipped with either a 201 or 218 cubic inch (3.3 or 3.5 liter) inline flathead six, Teddy.
…and the license plates are ordinary BC truck plates.
Good to know you two.
“Old Truck Advertising and Sign Design”…love how the vehicle is actually an integral part of the business! Very cool Fargo and it’s great to still see it in regular use.
I’ve seen a couple of these over the years and mistakenly thought they were Chevys. My father once owned the model that came after this one, this truck and that one look like they were built out of leftover ship steel.
Speaking of 40s trucks, I ran across a CC this week when I took a new route home. Parked at the curb was a mildly customized 40 Ford pickup…it was painted gold and silver if I remember right. Sorry, I didn’t have a camera or phone with me at the time. It was just parked amid 3 or 4 non-descript late model mid-sized sedans.
Good old American trucks always put me in a good mood too! I agree that trucks of this era were all beautiful. You can tell that a lot of artistic effort was put into designing those curves!
A Very nice and durable rig there , I remember these well .
“Did the U.S. (or Canada, in this case) build a bad truck in the 1940s?”
Yes and no ~ road speeds were under 50 MPH for the most part back then so the Flathead engines were(barely) O.K., for Highway use but as soon as you wanted to drive them far away , they had loads of problems , over heating , burning valves , short piston ring life from over speeding the long stroke , engines , bad rods and so on .
I prefer the GM overhead valve powered versions , GMC’s had full pressure oiling , Chevrolets had open rod bearings with dippers in troughs and oil squiring jets , O.K. to about 3,000 RPM’s for long distances , if you needed higher speeds , over drives are available (Ruckstell / Truckstell etc.) or re gearing the final drive was an option .
Nosy inside , these rigs are a large part of wy I’m deaf now but I always liked working with/on them .
-Nate
1941 Ad:
Nice. This vintage Dodge/Fargo came out in 1939, and was built with only very minor changes through 1947. So it might still be very hard to pin down the exact year.
Here’s one more, Paul (these are on eBay as I speak), the 1939 ad (grille slightly different). I knew about the “Mercury” trucks for Canada, but never the Fargo–nice to read about these today!
70 years old!
Makes you wonder what we’ll still be seeing on the street in 2085. Other than VW bugs (and Priuses ?) of course…
That’s a sweet looking rig! The bodystyle on these is really cool looking…reminds me a lot of the ’46 Chevy trucks in a way (Mr Myagi’s truck). The fact that Canada had its own truck line is pretty interesting too.
Old trucks, always nice.
Fargo trucks were also imported and sold here. From the thirties into the fifties.
Here’s a 1953 ad featuring a Fargo 7 tons 108 hp diesel truck. It has a 5 speed transmission and power brakes. Who made the engine ? Cummins ?
Source and more original Fargo ads from the late forties and early fifties:
http://www.conam.info/importeurs-bedrijfsauto-s-beschrijvingen/fargo-us-r-s-stokvis-zn-rotterdam
Curious. That truck is clearly not a North American Chrysler product. It looks very European; was Chrysler badge-engineering trucks back then? I don’t have time to track that specific truck down, but it’s not a Dodge in disguise for sure.
Also, I’m not aware of Chrysler offering any diesels in their trucks back then either.
I just noticed that the price mentioned in the ad is for a “chassis without cab”. Also, the steering wheel is on the right.
A Fargo chassis with an English cab and, maybe, a Perkins diesel ?? Lots of post-war trucks in Europe got a cab from an independent coach builder.
That explains it. And that’s likely the case. It looks British to me, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Dodge built trucks at Kew in the UK
Thanks ! Solved.
http://www.old-dodge-trucks.co.uk/dodge_kew.htm
In the early 70s, my local hobby shop had a semi-buried case fully of 50s and early 60s Dinky and Corgi toys. One of the ones I picked up was a Dodge stake truck that looked kind of weird. It was one of these. Took me years to find out it was a Kew.
Dodge produced their first diesel truck engine in 1939, Paul. It was a four cycle 331 c.i. inline six that developed 96 h.p. and 225 ft./lbs of torque. Installed in a three ton TDKA chassis, it successfully ran a 6,378 mile reliability run from New York to LA and San Francisco and back to New York. Had the Second World War not intervened, it might have seen more widespread use.
Diesel engines did not begin to become more common in heavy trucks until the late forties and early fifties.
P.S. Your feature truck today sure is sweet old thing.
I did a bit of research on that; interesting. Given that it had the same 331 cubic inches as the big gas truck engine, it would appear that it was based on that.
And from a few comments I’ve read, apparently it was problematic, which is why it was not continued. Many engine manufacturers got burned with trying to build diesels in the 1930s and early 40s (like Hall-Scott); it just wasn’t as easy as they though it would be, especially when starting with a gas engine. A number of them tried that; almost inevitably they failed. Truck diesels needed to be designed from scratch, which was an expensive proposition. That’s why the number of successful diesel engine manufacturers soon shrunk to a select few, and those were all clean-sheet diesel designs.
I don’t want to impugn this Dodge diesel based on the limited amount of info available, but if it had been successful, it would undoubtedly have stayed in production after the war. There was already a growing interest in them, and the successful ones were doing well.
Right. Sounds like it’s a lesson GM should have remembered when they were developing their ill-fated 350 cubic inch diesel in the 1970’s that was based on the Olds gas motor.
Dodge had plenty of big flathead six cylinder gas engines to fall back on, the largest of which was a wopping big 413. These were sometimes equipped two carburetors and dual exhaust. Old timers I have spoken with say that these were fast trucks for the day. Photo below from the net of a 331 with twin carbs installed in a fire truck
Surf through the cohort you’ll find a 15cwt one of those I shot locally registered as a 46 Fargo,probably with Kew engine(smaller bore flat head UK sourced)though most Fargos we have are the US Dodge variety,
The garage where my Dad worked used a 42 21/2 tonner for delivering Ferguson tractors until the tractors out grew it then the put a flat bed on their A5 Bedford tow truck and used that the Fargo was sold off and became a housetruck.
Good to see the Dodge not in the garage.
Here’s a Turkish Fargo pickup.
Makes me want to go watch an old James Cagney movie.
Very nice old truck. I’m a bit surprised no one has mentioned this previously (perhaps I missed it), but it is an interesting shot with the Smart Fortwo across the street. It looks like it would be a perfect fit on the bed of the old girl.
A very spiffy Fargo wrecker in Portugal.
…and with a Morris Oxford on the hook.
Spanish Dodge from the late seventies (formerly known as Barreiros).