1975 International D200 Truck Still Hard At Work Hauling Gravel

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– Posted on July 25, 2025

Our driveway and parking pad in Port Orford needed some additional gravel. A friend there gave me the name of a guy who does smaller loads, ideal for tipping under the low branches of trees. So I called up Dale and ordered a few loads. I was out front by Coast Guard Road that has quite a steep grade when I heard what sounded like an older V8 at full chat. Then I saw the distinctive face of a vintage orange International slowly come into view. The bed was sitting mighty low over the rear wheels.

But it was all in a day’s work for this old workhorse; Dale said it’s hauled over 150 loads this year already.

Dale spread the gravel masterfully, and headed out for another. He bought the truck a couple of years ago, where it had been sitting for some time. Originally it was bought and used by ODOT (Oregon Dept. of Transportation), hence the high-vis orange paint.

There’s no badge on the front fender but this appears to be a 1-ton series truck although the loads it’s hauling are more like three times that. International was constantly changing the series numbers on their trucks, but apparently it is a D200, the same number designation also applied to the 3/4 ton pickups. 1975 was the last year for International pickups and light duty trucks. They just couldn’t compete with the Big Three in terms of volume, labor costs, and also significantly, dealers, as International truck dealers tended not to be where folks were now buying trucks for recreational use (the suburbs).  The Scout line soldiered on for a few more years.

Dale said that when he bought it the 345 CID International V8 wouldn’t run right, but a bit of attention to some minor things restored its health. It runs like a champ now, and sounds great under a load.

It’s got the classic 4-speed with the granny low gear, pretty essential for this line of work. That shift level has an extension on it.

Our driveway is long so it ended up taking Dale four loads. All the more opportunity to see and hear his old Corn Binder at work.

Here’s a key motivation for putting down more gravel:

It starts with taking down trees; eleven of them, to open up the views a bit more and bring sunshine on this bank. My buddy Ray takes them down; he’s a mostly retired 73 year old life-long tree trimmer, but he’s still willing to climb.

Here he is getting ready to drop the top of this one.

This led to renting a chipper to dispose of the limbs and smaller trunks. It turned out to be a seriously large one; a very serious professional machine that happily digested rounds up to 12 inches or more. Stephanie had never fed a chipper before and she got into the spirit of, working out any lingering anger or frustrations.

Hopefully not about me!

This chipper weighs some 5,500-6,000 lbs. I could really feel it when I towed it from Coos Bay, our nearest rental yard. When we finished going through our big pile (quite quickly, thanks to this beast) I could not move it forward up the very gentle slope of our grassy yard, even though it was dry. I couldn’t believe it. But this is where FWD really sucks, as the quite heavy tongue load of the big chipper meant the front wheels were just too lightly loaded. So I had to get out the recovery strap and hook, and Stephanie used the little Tracker to pull us out. It didn’t take much of a pull; the Promaster was right on the edge of traction.

We had another wood pile halfway up the driveway, and the Promaster struggled again even though there was some old gravel there. So that’s when I decided to give Dale a call. Gravel to the rescue.