Owned by John & Peggy Milliman Friendship Forest Christmas Tree Farm Mechanicsville, MD

1971 M-817 5-Ton Dump WO/W

"Smedley D."

More pictures and video of this old truck

And at work

From John:

Okay, so it isn't a Stovebolt. And it doesn't have a Detroit Diesel.

But it is cool. And it's a Jeep. Really. Actually, it was built by the General Products Division, Kaiser-Jeep Corporation / American Motors Corporation (AKA, "AM General"). And it has an In-line 6 Cummins Diesel. A big one ...

A lot of folks, when they see Smedley D for the first time, think it's a "Deuce." Honest mistake as the M-54/M-809 series (5-tons) and the M-35 series (and earlier) 2.5-tons look alike. They even have the same cab. But a Deuce, Smedley is certainly not. We'll get back to the truck itself in a moment.

To prepare you for the story, take a minute to enjoy some of the suspense in this video (it is very cool). And please note at the end, the fine wreath on Smedley's grille, curtesy of Craig Hamilton, Friendship Forest on-site wreath-maker (at Christmas time, of course).

So why?

My fascination with the M-809 Series trucks goes back to my Marine Corps days when I spent a lot of time in these behemoths going to the field, coming out of the field, going to the rifle range, returning from the rifle range. But as I recall, we Marines spent more time *waiting* for the 5-tons to arrive then we did actually riding in them. Nonetheless, I have many fond memories of these trucks. I even used the front bumper of one as a breakfast table once (anywhere you could ...) ...in the cold rain in Quantico (that's Virginia, not Korea or anything) in October, 1987. Man that was fun! Really, I enjoyed every minute of being in the field -- I was being paid to go camping and to play with guns. So the long and the short of it is that these trucks represent a happy part of my past.

Flash forward to the present day.

The Whole Point It's fun, but on our farm, everyone (including the old trucks) pulls their own weight.

Peggy and I, in addition to running a web site for pre-1973 GM trucks and working for the Navy at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, run a 17-acre choose and cut Christmas tree farm. Growing evergreens gets tougher the further south you get from the Arctic Circle. It's really tough to do on a drought-prone, sea-level sandbar next to the Chesapeake Bay (which is what Southern Maryland is). The key -- water. And lots of it.

So, we have a pond (two, actually) that we irrigate from. But over the course of the last few drought seasons (and the 20 years the pond has been there), we have been getting precariously close to the bottom (as the bottom is moving up, filled with silt, sand, and great decaying matter). This year, we saw things that haven't been dry in 30 years. We had a 15 foot stretch inside the pond we could walk on. We at least still had water. Our neighbors' pond were dry, with cracks at the bottom even. So, we shared what water we had left with them. We got down to only four feet of water in the middle.

For several years we had planned a long-term project to enlarge the pond to eliminate some of the marshy spots near the springs and creek. We knew we had to at least drag the pond in an attempt to get more volume of water. That plan got out of analysis-paralysis when a very old, big and heavy backhoe showed up at our neighbor's (who is the welder). We took our grandson over to see it and Lloyd said the fellow who owned it wanted to get rid of it. Oh yea babee ... a backhoe! An OLD backhoe - that worked!

We started the expansion and dredging project and the backhoe worked like a champ. The poor little Farmdawg was working its wheels off hauling heavy soil to the fill-in station. We really didn't have enough truck.

Got Dump?

Our farm truck (Farmdawg) -- see all the skeletons conga dance from the Stovebolt closet -- is a 1985 Ford F-350. This old truck is a 4WD short wheelbase, regular cab, non-dually with a short dumping flatbed (and a big honking 460 engine). We added the dump mechanism a while back when we got rid of the 1973 International 1800 Loadstar dump truck that we had, in order to get the THEN much-needed 1965 Fire Tanker Truck. Farmdawg is a handy truck for hauling firewood, sawdust, brush, scrap, other folk's junk. With this pond project, though, we discovered that even as loyal and faithful a friend as ole Farmdawg is, everyone has a physical limit. After the third and final time we broke it from overloading it with the backhoe, our welder neighbor flipped up his welding helmet and said, "You need a bigger truck."

We had known this day was coming for a while, to be honest.

Surveying the motor pool, we got to thinking that maybe we could reduce the herd a little / lot and replace three vehicles (the farm truck, the water truck and the dually pickup) with just one vehicle. Spec'd and upfitted to haul and dump manure and woodchips (or anything else), pull trailers, move Mennonite work crews and generally do 90 percent of what we need to do on the farm. So we went new truck shopping thinking that if we were going to buy new and upfit to our specific needs, the truck was going to have to eliminate all of the other (mostly modern) trucks on the farm. So we checked out the F-450/F-550 and Dodge Ram 4500/5500 cab and chassis rigs that we could have upfitted with landscape bodies, dump bodies, or whatever. Just for comparison, I also looked at the "light duty" Freightliner, Kenworth, Hino and Isuzu C&C's. It quickly became apparent the 1.5-ton class trucks (F-450 and Ram 4500) were the way to go.

Sticker Shock

It was all a really great idea. We worked up a good spec on a truck that, on paper, was really going to do it all for us. A 1.5-ton crew cab diesel 4x4 with a 5-yard dumping landscaper box and towing package. We hit total on the calculator...

The figure truly took our breath away. All I could say was wow! $60,000 just for a cab and chassis??? And then another $15,000 for a box?? Dudes .... seriously??? The last time I bought a new truck was 1996. I thought $30K for a Dodge Ram 3500 SLT Laramie package 4x4 dually with all the bells, whistles and V-10 as living high on the hawg. Spending more than $80,000 on a new truck (by the time it was parked in the pole barn ready to work) was just not going to happen.

So forget THAT. We decided to make ole Farmdawg work, one way or the other. And Farmdawg, built Ford tough, was willing, too, bless its mechanical heart. That truck sure lived up to its name. Like a good dog, it had a lot of heart, but in the end, it just wasn't enough truck to hang with the Big Freakin' Backhoe. So we were back to the fact that we broke it. Repeatedly. Just not enough truck ...

What to do .... ??

I had been watching the surplus sales (for grins -- much to Peggy's chagrin ) and had seen the 5-tons had been showing up regularly. It seems the Department of Defense is dumping all of it's pre-War on Terror vehicular inventory -- thousands of non-IED "resistant" tactical vehicles. I could finally get one of my beloved 5-tons!

Being part of a proud military family, Peggy liked the idea. So when a nice 5-ton dump appeared on the surplus auction locally (Ft. Meade, Maryland), I took an afternoon off from work and inspected the truck. My Brother-in-law (retired Air Force) met me and we checked out the truck. It was solid! It even started right up as soon as I hit the starter switch. It built up air pressure in less than 60 seconds. Impressive. The odometer showed 9,100 miles and the tires looked new. The spare hadn't ever been on anything, as the nubbies were still on the treads. It even had the pioneer tools still onboard.

"Peggy liked the idea" ~ Peggy here. I like dump trucks. I like a working truck. Call me practical. The hardest working truck on the farm was getting torn up trying to move all this dirt (and Farmdawg has other chores to do, mind you!). At the rate they were going, the pond project would still be going on when our Grandchildren take over the farm. The "new truck" daydream goes out the window -- oh, that part I liked the best! The second best part I liked - one truck comes in; two can go out! My only hope was that this *new* dump truck would at least mostly work. It didn't have to run up and down the highway ... just work the farm. I was thinking we wouldn't even have to tag it or get insurance. My Brother (who is a wrencher himself) said the truck looked really good. Our daughter's Father-in-law was familiar with the actual truck - he is Maryland National Guard. So ... this seemed like an early Christmas present. I was still a bit skeptical. How big is a 5-ton anyway? How big is Farmdawg? Mike Roache's Dempsey is a 2-ton ... how big is a FIVE ton? Hmmmm...

It's all about Logistics

To our amazement, we won the auction! We got all the paperwork submitted (an "End-Use Certificate" to certify that I wasn't going to hand it over to the Iranians or Chinese or the Taliban -- like a 40-year old dump truck is a real threat to Western Civilization) and made the big trip up to Ft. Meade to recover the truck. Not having a plate for it meant that we had to haul it. More fun! Fortunately, we still had our friend's low-boy trailer that's been sitting here most of the summer (and occasionally put to work ).

Here are the pictures on Photobucket of the trip to Ft. Meade to get the truck. Stovebolter Doug "Hambone" Hamilton went with me. We had a smooth, fun trip in the 1972 GMC 9500, Gort.

The only hairy part of the pick up was getting the 5-ton on the trailer -- the rear duals overhung the sides of the trailer by an inch and a half on either side. That meant we had to be exact with our alignment going up the ramps.

From the drivers seat, as soon as the front tires hit the ramps, all I could see was sky out of the windshield and the woods at the far end of the surplus lot. I relied on Hambone to steer me verbally onto the ramps and up onto the trailer. He did so perfectly and we got on in one try. We put the chains to her and off we went.

Being Friday noon (late summer) at this point, and in the Nation's Capitol, I was expecting the worse for traffic. We didn't get it, though -- the ride home was smooth and fun. We were pretty heavy, though -- my guess is that we were approximately 50,000 lbs coming down the road.

It was fun, though, and we got home without incident -- even if you count going into a stripmall area for a drink on the way home. You do what you have to do sometimes. And when a FedEx driver in a small semi followed us, I didn't feel so bad.

Peggy here again. John called as he was approaching the farm and asked if I would get a picture of them coming down the driveway. I grabbed the camera and found a good shooting position near the house (we have a long lane coming in).

I could hear old Gort winding and snorting as he was coming up our county road, about half a mile away.

We always refer to Gort as "Poppa's BIGGGG truck." I had only seen the pictures of the 5-ton on the computer screen. Gort was just in view pulling past the neighbor's packing shed near the road. I lined Gort up in the camera view and then I almost dropped the camera (see the video). Gort suddenly looked like a Matchbox toy compared to that truck sitting on the trailer. As John turned in and drove down our lane, the truck got bigger and bigger. I was stunned to say the least. NOW, I know what a FIVE TON TRUCK looks like. HUGE.

Anyway, we got home, unloaded the truck and Hambone got the first ceremonial drive around the property.

"Unloaded the truck" ... that's all you were going to say?? As tight as it was to get it on the trailer, getting it off -- to me -- was totally scary! Again, I was filming and once they started to back off, I had to look away. Hambone was guiding again. I heard the loud whomp of the axle onto the ramp and figure it was okay to look again.

Man! I don't know how you guys do it? Getting your wheels on to the skinny little ramps behind a truck (whatever the size). Shoot - backing out of the garage is a challenge for me anymore.

We then were able to take a real good look at exactly what we had gotten. In addition to the goodies already mentioned (i.e., good batteries, tires and tools), we found the truck equipped with the bench seats, sides, bows and tarp to make it a troop hauler. We also found all fluids in good condition and full. It even had been recently greased. The passenger side 40-gallon diesel tank was FULL. There were three charged fire extinguishers on board. It has one glad hand air gauge and chuck. And the crowning touch -- there was even lunch in the map compartment (Mexican meal MRE)!

According to the markings on the truck, it was last assigned to the 253rd Engineer Company (Maryland National Guard) in Laplata, Maryland -- which is about a 30-minute drive from our farm. With only 9,000 miles on the odometer. We guess they didn't use it a whole lot.

Peg again. I was so glad that the truck (I thought) was perfect; ready to work. Nothing to mess with, right? Wrong -- this is a Stovebolter. It is in his genes. Notice his hood ornament in the photo? And somewhere during the week after Smedley arrived, there is a supply of camo colored spray paint in the shops. Smedley has a small make-over. John's done the bumper for the 3rd Marine Division -- John's division from both his Okinawa and Hawaii tours. The hood ornament was quite the gem. The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.

So you don't get the idea that this was a PERFECT deal ... close, but there were a few things to fix. The wiper blades were toast. The driver's side windshield was broken and the rear turn indicators didn't work -- turns out, someone had stuck 12-volt bulbs in there. The truck is a 24-volt system. Quick trip to NAPA and the turn indicators worked again. The wiper blades and the windshield are on order from a parts dealer.

Another cool spin-off, there is a website (similar venue as Stovebolt.com) for folks who like these old military trucks -- Steel Soldiers.com. Have gotten a lot of good information from there.

The truck has been working like a truck since it got here. We got it tagged and titled in short order (and it wasn't a problem with insurance or the tags, surprise!). Besides the pond project making major headway, Smedley has been delivering pond muck and wood chips. His debut, however was to the local produce auction to pick up my Sister-in-law's haul of flowers and veggies. Needless to say, the Mennonite neighbors all enjoyed seeing the truck as it drove up, "What's John got now?"

The truck, as should be, has been running good (and those fixes have not been too costly), a lot of help, not to mention a boatload of fun to drive. His next big off-farm trip was the the Annual Leonardtown Veterans Day Parade ... the only military truck to be in it.

So at the end of the day, so to speak, when I get the inevitable question of "Why???" I can either give the whole whole story of new truck shopping, sticker shock math, being able to go places with heavy loads no Kenworth I know of dares tread (at a fraction of the cost), or I can just smile and answer, "Because I could."

Only my old truck family understands anyway.

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