Now that’s a very comforting and reassuring face. Something about these International Loadstar trucks evokes those feelings, maybe because of their reputation for rugged reliability. Or because I drove numerous versions and loved their straightforwardness. Or maybe it’s just because they were everywhere, the most common mid-range truck built during their long career, from 1962 through 1979. Well into the nineties, they were still hauling kids to school, delivering the produce to the market, and standing sentinel at every roadside construction project. And if you live in the right place, this one will still deliver books to your neighborhood, maybe even some on the history of International trucks.
These Internationals were so common that they almost look generic now, like a Tonka Truck scaled up to full size. It was really a brilliant move on International’s part, inasmuch as the Loadstar never really looked dated, like the over-styled Ford, Chevy and Dodge trucks of the time. If International still made them, would anyone really notice? A truly timeless design.
Actually, their predecessor that appeared in 1957 already had most of the Loadstar’s formula for immortality down, but just wasn’t quite there yet. Simple, nothing trendy; just a generic truck.
And this one, carrying a Gertenslager bookmobile body on its back for over forty years, is a particular handsome combination. No, it’s not operated by the library anymore, but by a fellow how runs it as a used bookstore, mostly for the joy of it rather than a real viable business enterprise, but who knows? “Gertie” shows up in random locations at equally random times, for a day or two at a time. And even if there’s nothing that appeals on board, it’s fun to step inside the living time capsule.
The clerestory windows make a major contribution to the pleasant atmosphere. Every RV should have them. In fact, this would make a killer conversion. I’m sure it’s been done a few times already. Now what someone needs to do is turn one of these into a bookmobile for only old car books; or better yet, just old truck books. What a nice place to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon, reading up on the history of old International trucks.
Like this tasty 1939 semi-truck and trailer. What a change from today’s look-alike boxy rigs.
Or this bright red ’39 truck picking up the Air Mail from that DC-3.
Or this lavish RV that the famous explorer Attilio Gatti drove, styled by no less than Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky. Oh oh; I think I better step out; I’m getting lost back there.
On the way back to reality, I’ll take a quick glance at that familiar steering wheel and big stick shift. I drove a Loadstar dump truck for Baltimore County, a brief gig in my endless brief encounters with the working world in my youth. My job was supposed to be walking the streets all day with a broom, just ahead of a street sweeper, sweeping out the debris under parked cars. But I had just the ticket: a commercial license from Iowa, and I was soon trucking instead of walking.
These Loadstars inevitably had the family V8 underhood, either a 345 or 392 CID solid lump of iron. It was the same basic engine used in everything from Scouts to anything shy of the really big trucks, so they were built tough. They wouldn’t rev like the Chevy V8 trucks, which just couldn’t hide their kinship to the Corvette. But they had the torque in the cellar, and it was hard to stall one, even for the new kids trying their hand for the first time.
They pretty much all came with a five speed tranny, and ours had the split-gear rear ends, which yielded ten gears. That was a toy to keep one’s attention to some degree in those days long before handheld electronics. Instead of texting, I split gears; pulling and pushing the red button attached to the gear shift up and down, trying to avoid the tell-tale grinding from the rear axle.
Yes, there’s a lot of history in Gertie, in its books, its long career, and my Loadstar memories. I hope it keeps showing up.
Great story! You can’t help but appreciate the honesty of these old trucks. You know, I’m really not a “truck person”, I prefer the handling and efficiency of a car, but there is really nothing more majestic and well, American, than seeing a truck pulling or hauling a heavy load down the road, the way it was designed to.
I remember back in the 80′s the Ypsilanti, MI Library system had a fleet of Bookmobiles. They would come once a week and park out front of the elementary schools and those of us in the neighborhood could come and check out what we wanted. It was a fun experience for a kid, and I would think it still would be, well, at least to me…
While I prefer cars to trucks for matters of general transportation, I have quite a bit of respect for rugged, honest, purposeful tools like these. The wraparound windshield and front-end styling looked rather anachronistic as the 1970s wore on (a more modern-looking fiberglass flip nose was also an option in the later years), but the longevity of these trucks is a testament to the quality of the design. Incidentally, these were the last medium-duty International trucks to share a cab design with light pickups.
One feature of trucks like these that frustrates me, however, is the relative dearth of information readily available about them. I’d love to have a concrete sense of when visible changes occurred and what models were available in what years.
I used to own many Internationals hence my avatar and name. I once had the factory service manuals for all of there medium duty trucks of this era. I used them to keep a loadstar ladder truck running for a small lighting company. It had a 35 foot ladder powered by a big Dayton motor turning a worm drive that once actuated some part of a WWII bomber.
There are several things I remember well about that Loadstar. If you really wanted to scare a pedestrian you had only to switch off the ignition and then bump start it while still rolling. About a second later it would backfire like an atom bomb and the unsuspecting jogger would suffer a massive coronary. We drove it to Eugene from Salem for a job once. It vibrated all of the fizz out of our sodas in about ten minutes of I5 driving. And the bass on the stereo was completely useless due to the pitch at which the old 345 V8 ran. When we finally got back to Salem I felt as if I had participated in a rodeo. It was eventually replaced by a Ford F650. But I still see that truck around, still working hard.
My father was a Cornbinder man, and had a 1949 KB-11-F, a pretty good-sized six-wheeler that he used to tow low-bed trailers for hauling bulldozers etc. from one job to another. It had a five-speed main transmission and a three-speed brownie. This rig had a two-speed double-drum winch mounted behind the cab, and a removable boom that fit the frame behind the fifth wheel. We used that for lifting things such as bulldozer engines and steering clutches, and I remember loading logs with it a couple of times too. The truck wasn’t the fastest rig in the world, but it had all the power we needed. It was dead reliable, and would start after standing unused for two months as easily as though it had just stood overnight. It had the same cab as the late-30′s trucks shown above, and very similar fenders and big free-standing headlights, but a more upright nose.
Paul, you really hit a soft spot here for me. I’ll try to keep it short.
I grew up in the “Harvester” section of Broadview Il less than a block from one of International’s parts depot. My mom and dad both worked there from the late 60s up to the closure in the 90s. In fact the majority of my family worked there or at the Melrose plant or at what is now Case IH in Burr Ridge.
Loadstars, Transstars, all varieties of tractors and mining equipment rolled through that place. I’d sit at the local park and watch rail cars full of trucks and tractors come and go on the two rail spurs from the ICG Piggy Back line.Those Loadstars were everywhere back then.
My first experience driving a Loadstar came in 1993 (our village kept their trucks till death) when I was working as summer help at the village Public Works dept. It was a tanker/jetter truck. My partner was anxious to get back to the office and couldn’t wait the 2 seconds for me to light a smoke and just jammed it into first. No clutch, no grind, no stall she just started rolling.
Very neat. We had a bookmobile come to our school semi-regularly. It looked very similar to this one inside, but was based on a cab-over-engine model. Our city only had the one, and it disappeared around 1992 or 1993. I’m glad I got to experience it while it was still around. I imagine bookmobiles are an endangered species these days.
My dad’s volunteer fire department still has a ’77 Loadstar pumper, complete with two massive red gumballs on the roof. I’ve driven it in the past and will be very disappointed whenever they decide to replace it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, apart from the fact it’s going on 35 years old. I doubt the department will have it in another five years. About two years ago they got rid of the surplus M715 they used as a brush buggy. While it was red and white on the outside, it was still OD green on the inside. I think the white canvas soft top probably needed replacing, but other than that it was in great shape.
Turns out only my dad, a couple other guys on the department, and I know how to drive an unsynchronized gearbox. Rather than make the rest of the guys learn, they sold the Jeep and bought a brand new 4wd Chevy 2500 that won’t go nearly as many places as that Jeep, though of course it will actually do better than 55 mph on the highway, even towing the trailer hauling a couple of those glorified 6×6 golf carts which they bought in case they actually need to go off-road. Even in rural Wisconsin the number of folks able to drive old rigs like the M715 and the Loadstar is rapidly, and likely terminally, decreasing.
Ours was a ’59 twelve-and-a-half-ton grain truck with a “cheater” axle and the 345 V8 that Dad picked up in the early ’70′s at a grain company auction. The brakes on the cheaters would overheat, causing some wild rides home from the elevator until he just unhooked them. Over the years we gradually tended to the neglect that “The Grain Truck” had suffered in its previous life, till when it was sold to my uncle at Dad’s farm sale in ’84 it ran perfectly and brought more than he had paid for it. The only lasting quirk it had, really, was a tendency for the engine to be hard starting if you let it stall in town while the elevator guy filled it with shelled corn-aluminum pistons? But, as with some other entries, a quck pull with the tractor (Farmall, preferably) and log chain and you were on your way again. I have many fond memories of working my way up and down all ten gears, bouncing up and down in those peculiar, short vertical motions that constituted “ride” in that beloved vehicle.
My older brother, Steve, drove the Bookmobile for Clackamas County back in the 1980′s… he was passed-over for a head librarian job, and ended up moving down to Palo Alto… probably a good thing, since that’s where he met his future wife!
Funny you should mention the loadstar’s resemblance to a “Tonka” toy truck. Actually Tonka never made a toy of the Loadstar, however Ertl did, in 1/16th scale out of pressed steel. You can still find them on eBay and other auction sites.
Thank you Paul. I love this CC. I remember visiting the bookmobile with my mom, in the early ’70s in Miami, FL. I would always look for books about cars. This nice old truck sure brought back some fond memories. Almost brings tears to my eyes. A mixture of nostalgia and sadness for a long lost childhood.
AH!!! You have reminded me of good-old 82-5, the school bus that took me home from elementary school every day. It was driven my the venerable Dean, who split his time between driving these beauties and fixing them in the Gordon County bus barn. With Dean in his grease-stained work shirt and the windows covered in condensation on a cold day, there was no doubt we would get home….how in the hell did that old bus make that cavernous steel body so toasty warm? Formerly runny noses instantly went crusty.