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John & Peggy Milliman's1949 Chevrolet 1-Ton |
15 May 2006 Update
From Peggy:
Here's a story below about the truck that John wrote for the NAS Patuxent River (MD) station newspaper, the Tester: We know you've seen enough of our truck here and there throughout the site, but we thought you might enjoy some of the truck's history. Especially since John had to write this up anyway!
The former pictures on our page were the engine and a shot of the interior. (You know the story about the cobbler's son having no shoes ... Not that there aren't a million pictures of John's assorted vehicles, both on the computer and in a shoe box!)
Besides the story below, generally "Ole Charlie" still works around the farm, moving and a-hauling stuff, people and dogs!
And here's the other '49 (2-ton) still waiting for some time ...
John and Peggy Milliman
Bolter # 1
Oakville, Maryland
By John Milliman
Presidential Helicopters Program Public Affairs
NAVAIR, Patuxent River, MD -- The American Truck Historical Society is holding its annual National Convention and Truck Show in Baltimore, May 25-27, and bringing approximately 1,000 antique trucks to the city’s Carroll Park.
Among them will be the truck selected to represent light commercial trucks on the show’s poster and advertising – a truck with surprising ties to NAVAIR.
Charlie Dady, father of Mark Dady, the deputy program manager for the Presidential Helicopters Program (PMA-274) here, bought the red and black 1949 Chevrolet 1-ton pickup new in Dickson, Tenn. It wasn’t his first choice for a light-duty truck to serve his appliance and radio repair business.
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| What might have been -- Charlie Dady's first post-war truck -- the '47 that burned more oil than gas... |
The elder Dady had made his mark in Dickson County by figuring out a niche market (electronics) and going into it. And when World War Two ended, Dady couldn’t get enough appliances and radios to sell – so he bought a 2-ton Chevrolet box truck to bring in appliances from Nashville. He also bought a ½-ton ’46 Chevrolet pickup to use for deliveries and repair calls.
“That truck burned more oil than it did gas,” Mark, recalls, “so Dad eventually took it back to Dickson Chevrolet. They just happened to have a weird truck on the lot that nobody wanted – it was a brand new 1949 Chevrolet 1-ton with a 9-foot step side box on it.”
Dady bought it, took it home and removed the step side body and carefully stored it in the back of the garage.
“The whole time I was growing up, that box was at the back of the garage under a tarp,” Mark Dady remembers.
With a utility body installed (using the step side box’s tailgate), the truck went to work about the same time Dady received the first of what would become an American icon – the television.
“We got into stock one of the first three TV’s in the state of Tennessee,” Mark relates, “And the first in Dickson. This truck delivered it and the antenna that went up on the house.”
Despite being a delivery truck for a thriving electronics business, the truck didn’t accumulate very many miles.
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| Charlie Dady (left) tends his business in 1948. Many of the appliances shown in the photo were delivered by the Stovebolt Page Flagship. |
“Delivering TVs and installing antennae isn’t something you did in the winter back then,” Mark explains. “Or in the bad weather. So the truck sat in the garage for nine months out of the year. Also, that was when they were first paving the roads in Dickson County, so when the truck did go out, it usually picked up a good undercoating of thick Tennessee asphalt!”
The truck’s original engine – a low-pressure, babbitted 235 CID straight six – fell victim to the winter freeze the truck’s first winter in the Volunteer State.
“Dad got sick in December 1949 and the truck wasn’t properly stored. The freeze came and the block cracked.”
The Dadys took the truck to Bates Machine Shop in Centerville for a new crate motor. That motor lasted until 1996. When they returned to Bates 47 years later, a surprise was in store.
“They had rebuilt the original motor and that’s what got put back in the truck in ’96 and is in it now!” Dady says.
Mark has many fond memories of growing up with his dad’s truck.
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| The Dady Boys -- Charlie Dady (left) and son Mark with the truck shortly before it became the Stovebolt Page flagship. Since the photo was taken, the truck has been reunited with its original running boards and mirror. |
“I learned how to drive in that truck,” he says. “I even went on my first date in that truck.”
It wasn’t that romantic, however…
“My Mom rode with us.”
Eventually, the truck got taken out of service (Dady closed his business for health reasons in the 1960’s and went to work as a design engineer for Redcap in Arizona where he has several patents still in his name) but not out of the family. The step side bed was taken out of its nearly half-century of dry storage and was reunited with the truck.
Except for an additional tail light (the truck came off the assembly line with only one), the truck remains completely original.
“The coat hanger loop my dad installed in the truck for his trip out to Arizona
(he had sinus problems and occasionally went out west for relief) is still there
behind the passenger’s head,” Mark explains. “Even the inspector’s grease pen mark remains on the firewall from the assembly line.”
Dady’s truck rolled off the GM truck line at Norwood, Ohio in August, 1949.
While long retired from being the flagship for “Charlie’s Radio Repair” and appliance shop, the Dady truck has entered into its second half century as the flagship for a new medium – a 10,000-member internet web site for antique GM trucks, the Stovebolt Page (located online at www.stovebolt.com). Fitting for a truck that delivered the first television set in Western Tennessee – TV being the “new media” of the late ‘40’s.
“I think Dad would be proud,” Mark says.
Charlie Dady passed away in 2006, but his truck lives on as a testimony to his industry and thrift. Its preservation is dedicated to his memory.
“He told me not to restore it,” says Mark. “It doesn’t need it.”
See this truck, and other antique trucks – ranging from pickups to tractor-trailer rigs – at Baltimore’s Carroll Park.
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