“I was working in Colorado in the mid-’90s and saw this truck. A rancher was using it to throw feed to his cattle, and it was just neat. And I guess I’ve liked trucks since I was a little kid,” the 70-year-old Cummings said.
“My grandfather had a roofing company and always had a truck, and I think that kind of stuck with me,” he said.
Cummings finally bought the truck and brought it back to Ohio. The truck was 40 years old at that point, and only had 20,000 miles on it.
“I was gonna put a 350 Chevy in it, make it a hot rod truck, but my friends saw it and they talked me out it. Most of the trucks like this were worked to death, just destroyed, but this one was all original, and had no rust,” Cummings said.
Cummings had the engine redone, but the truck still has the original wiring harness and wires.
“I just replaced the tires a couple of years ago. They were rayon and flat-spotted easy, but it’s really hard to find 17.5-inch tires. Yokohama makes some, and they’re on it now,” he said.
The truck also has the original wood bed floor.
Cummings had the truck painted Aspen Green and cream, and then added red pinstriping and had the doors lettered with the name of his grandfather’s roofing company, including the actual street address and phone number. As he did more research on the truck, he discovered that General Motors used this paint scheme on one of its sales brochures for the GMC 150.
The GMC is truly a worker’s truck, equipped with a 270-cubic-inch, six- cylinder engine and four-speed creeper low transmission.
“It’s really a three-speed, with a floor shift, but the low gear is a creeper gear. It would probably pull a stump out of the ground,” Cummings said.
“In Colorado, the rancher fitted the truck with a hand throttle, got the truck going in that creeper gear and stood on the small step and threw feed to his cattle. I guess the truck never really left the farm.”
Cummings and his wife Judy spend the summer heading to cruise-ins and car shows with the truck.
“We’re out four nights a week, sometime more,” Judy said. “I wasn’t crazy about that truck when he bought it.”
But after being married for 50 years, Judy admits that cars have rubbed off on her, and she has her own favorite in the garage. We’ll examine that very rare ride next week.
To nominate your special vehicle for Wheels of the Week, contact us at: Wheels, Marketing Publications Department, Dayton Daily News, 1611 S. Main St., Dayton OH 45409 or via e-mail at arollins@coxohio.com. Include your name, daytime telephone number and a photo of your vehicle.
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