We had one correct answer to our June’s What Is It. Jack T. Briggs of Denver, Colorado correctly identified the vehicle as a Dodge Power Wagon used by the Waco Fire Department. Congratulations! You have won a year’s subscription to the Mountain States Collector.
The Dodge M37 3⁄4-ton 4×4 truck (G741) was Dodge’s follow-up to their successful WC Series from WWII. Introduced in 1951 it was used extensively by the United States armed forces during the Korean war. During the 1970s, they were replaced by the commercial truck based 1 1⁄4-ton M715 and M880 series.
It was not the most glamourous military vehicle, but it served an important job of transporting troops and supplies. It was the unsung hero of the Korean war. More recently it was used as a municipal brush firefighter truck. This one is from Waco, Texas.
The new owner Tim Gregg plans to use it as his barbecue kitchen from which he will sell some of the best barbecue meals in the mountain town of Bailey, Colorado. He is naming it The Smiling Pig. If you see this truck in Bailey, stop by. You can be assured you are in for a real treat.
Added note about our June’s What Is It
We had an additional note about our June’s What Is It from Fred Clark: “Last months’s What Is It, I know well as I was a radio operator in Germany during and after the Korean War and froze at night on duty in a power wagon with no heater in the winter. After service in 1955 I worked for N.Y Tele. Co. and for several early years worked with a Power Wagon as a 2 man team in construction. We had portable booms that fit on the front of the wagon and used the power winch also on the front to install telephone poles. Incidentally we had to dig the Company’s deep holes by hand and shovel, no power borers back then. These were the good ol’ days when I started at $1.05 an hour. Because I was a vet they gave me the extra 5 cents. You couldn’t get a kid today to work for such a small amount of money. And that was climbing poles summer and winter but 1957 I worked on the first power bucket in our area of Poughkeepsie, NY and only had to climb poles that were too far off the road to use.”
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