twforeman
Certified Great Northern Nut
I started a thread the other day about dumpsters in 1958 and the fact that I couldn't find anyone making models of dumpsters or garbage trucks from that time period.
Then I started doing some more searching on the internet and found a great site with lots of photos of front-loading garbage trucks and dumpsters.
So because I'm a crazy person, and I don't have enough projects in the works yet, I decided I needed to scratch build a front-load garbage truck and some dumpsters!
I want to make something close to this.
There are lots of photos on the site linked above that show both sides, the front and the back of various trucks. It was pretty easy to print some photos out and determine scale. I decided to base my truck on the photo above, and deciding that the tallest person in the photo was six feet tall made the numbers seem reasonable.
The main issue I have is that the trucks are all built on an International Harvester or GMC chassis and I was unable to find anything suitable to scavenge. So I grabbed something reasonable from the time period and decided to use that.
Of course the first issue is that since it's a semi-tractor, the wheel base is not nearly long enough. So I cut off the rear frame section. I also carefully removed the leaf springs so that I could re-use them.
After that I removed some of the existing frame rail from the engine section so I would have somewhere to glue a new rear frame on.
Then I started doing some more searching on the internet and found a great site with lots of photos of front-loading garbage trucks and dumpsters.
So because I'm a crazy person, and I don't have enough projects in the works yet, I decided I needed to scratch build a front-load garbage truck and some dumpsters!
I want to make something close to this.
There are lots of photos on the site linked above that show both sides, the front and the back of various trucks. It was pretty easy to print some photos out and determine scale. I decided to base my truck on the photo above, and deciding that the tallest person in the photo was six feet tall made the numbers seem reasonable.
The main issue I have is that the trucks are all built on an International Harvester or GMC chassis and I was unable to find anything suitable to scavenge. So I grabbed something reasonable from the time period and decided to use that.
Of course the first issue is that since it's a semi-tractor, the wheel base is not nearly long enough. So I cut off the rear frame section. I also carefully removed the leaf springs so that I could re-use them.
After that I removed some of the existing frame rail from the engine section so I would have somewhere to glue a new rear frame on.