Owned by Spanky Hardy "spanky" Bolter # 2870 North Carolina

1948 Chevrolet 5700 COE Holmes HD W35 Wrecker

More pictures of my old wrecker

From Spanky :

This old truck is a 1948 Chevrolet Loadmaster 5700 series, Holmes Heavy Duty model W35 Wrecker. It was purchased new from the Ernest Holmes Company by Boyett Chevrolet, Inc. of Corcoran, California.

Boyett owned the wrecker until the early 1970s.They sold it to Norris and Son Auto Repair of Hanford, California. I found out about the truck in the early '90s and tried (unsuccessfully) to buy it from them.

In December of 2014, I found out about a pretty decent old Holmes Wrecker that was for sale in Tulare, California. It was listed on Facebook and inquired about it. I struck a deal. It wasn't until I got the wrecker home that I realized that it was the SAME WRECKER I tried to buy from Norris back in the '90s -- 25 years ago!

The truck has a 235 6 cylnder engine, 4 Speed transmission, and a 2 speed rear axle. For the interior, the gauges are okay but at the moment, it has no seat!

The wrecker was red, white and blue when I purchased it. The pink you see in the Photobucket Album is the red faded out. That was the same color scheme that Norris and Son had for it.

The door art (from the photo) was a large National Automobile Club of America decal.

I gave the truck a good bath and then Scotchbrite-sanded the whole thing. I repainted the cab with black and white primer.

The wrecker unit is complete and needs no replacement parts. It will be fully operational when completed.

All it needs is repainting. I'm not sure of the color yet. It was originally Maroon when new. After several years, Boyett Chevrolet (dealership) repainted it yellow. It stayed that way until Norris purchased it and they painted it red, white, and blue.

I have a lot of the history from the Boyett family, the owners of the Dealership which first owned it. I was able to find the younger brother of the man who owned the Dealership. I was also able to gather more history on it from the son of one of the tow truck operators at Norris and Son, who bought it from Boyett.

Spanky

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