My wife called me from work one morning in September of 2006 and said that her coworker that had the '50 Chevy truck had finally decided he wanted to move on to another project. He’d been telling her for a couple of years that he was thinking of selling it. I'd been looking for a nice half ton AD for about ten years but it had to be a rust free truck and the right one still hadn‘t come my way. I hadn’t seen this truck but she said that he only lived a few blocks away from the office and every once in a while he would drive it in to work and park it right outside her window. She said it looked like a really nice old truck. It just so happened that she learned to drive in a ’50 AD that her grandfather used on the tobacco farm in NC.
Needless to say as I could get my boots on I jumped into my GMC and headed for the city. The hour-long ride gave me time to think, and I was really hoping that maybe after a decade of searching I’d finally got my chance to grab the brass ring.
As I drove past the factory parking lot on the highway that runs along side, I got a glimpse of the ‘50 sitting down by the front entrance. The gate to the lot was at the far end of the lot and as I turned off the four lane my mouth was getting dry and my heart was racing . Once down on the same level as the truck, which sat about a block away at the other end of the lot, it struck me that it wasn’t a half ton at all but a long, high three-quarter ton AD. I stopped right there at the entrance and sat for a few minutes thinking of just turning around and heading home.
Dummy me, It never occurred to me to ask what model it was, I just naturally assumed when you were talking about a ‘50 pickup it would be a half ton. As I sat there staring down the line of cars something stood out about that truck. She sat there real nice and proud amongst all those modern foreign low-riders and kind of beckoned to me, “come on down and look me over.” Yeah, that was it, she sat there with her head back and her chest out like she was saying, “I’m 56 years young and I’m still standing, where are all you off shore miracles gonna be in 56 years.”
That was the moment that I fell in love with the AD 3600 Chevy trucks. So much so that I just bought another this past summer, an example of the last of the breed a ‘54, 3600. So now I have got one from the end of the run, the middle of the run, and I’ve got my eyes open for one from the first of the run. All I need now is to hit the lottery and enough time to finish restoring three trucks all by myself.
So you want to lower that 3600 so she looks like she‘s crawling around on all four with her belly dragging on the ground? Naw, let her stand up proud and trade her for one of those half ton low-rider’s.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
