On a nice, sunny, warm Friday, near the end of August of this year, my wife and I went to take a look at this 1953 Chevy Panel Truck that she had found. The guy we talked to was selling it for another guy (his friend).
The guy told me that his friend's brother had bought the truck nine years ago and probably had it towed back. He had the intentions of restoring it but he was going to build a house first out on the farm property.
So while he started building his house, his health took a turn for the worse. He passed away and the truck sat along a dirt road by the woods on a private farm road.
The guy told me the truck sat like that for nine years. Then the brother of the guy who passed away told his friend to sell the truck for him. That's where I came in the picture.
Now I went with my wife and looked at it. It looked pretty ruff but it looked pretty much complete and wasn't hacked up anywhere.
The body needs a lot of work. Patch panels on the cowl (innner & outer), firewall panel, toeboard. Fenders need some new metal welded in. The body is really pretty darn straight !!
We made a deal with him and we came back the beginning of September. Again, on another nice, warm, sunny Friday and had it hauled back home to PA.
I worked hard getting stuff organized in my garage so that I could put it in there and work on it (for the next several years.) My wonderful wife bought me four dollies so that I could easily move the truck around inside the garage.
First thing I did on the truck was I took a brown Scotchbrite pad and went over half the truck. In about 30 minutes, I took off what I call fallout from the truck sitting along side that country farm road, at the side of the woods. That made it look a lot better.
I got some time to work on it a couple days this week and did some cleaning up and vacuuming inside the panel truck. Spraying a lot of things with Kroill. Took out all the cardboard panels and jute padding. I found some more rust above the wheel wells on both sides that will need new metal welded in. Guess I am going to be doing a lot of welding in my future -- after I get money saved up to buy patch panels.
These old panel trucks are really getting hard to find and especially around my area. They used to be so plentiful . So many businesses had these delivery trucks.
My Dad had a 1954 Chevrolet Panel Truck and I grew up as a little kid riding in that truck. So I have a lot of good memories about that truck. I have had several dreams of seeing this truck and in one dream I was actually driving it and I could feel myself shifting into all 3 gears (3 on the tree).
Now, finally, I have a Chevy Panel Truck !!! and A LOT of WORK to be done to bring it back to life and road worthy again. But that's all fun and pleasure.
Some good start to this adventure began in Garageguy's Welcome Centre post followed by even more in his post in Panels & Burbs forum. 
