While a lot of restorers go for the chrome grills, in all the original trucks I've come across in 25 years of searching salvage yards, etc., very very few of them had one originally. Actually, the only ones I've come across were on trucks that had the Deluxe equipment option, and that wasn't a lot. Keep in mind that when they were new, they were almost exclusively purchased by farmers or tradesmen, not suburbanites like today. A few dollars here or there was not to be wasted on fluff.
As far as the war chrome restrictions, that date is practically impossible to pinpoint, since certain items would have ran out at different plants at different times. It would also have been possible for some dealers to have things such as chrome bumpers in their stock to add on to trucks in the lot.
Bob
