Tue Aug 07, 2018 8:22 am by WEW51L110
Although the sheet metal says “D” model, the year of mfg. says it should resemble a “KB” model. Obviously put together by someone who had spare D sheet metal. I personally don’t believe that the International Harvester Co. would have produced this truck. They would have wanted it to be representative of their current truck offerings and not have assumed no one would notice. Perhaps another company that specialized in fire truck manufacturing had the spare D parts lying around and in an effort to restart the company back to civilian production after the war could have produced this truck under IH license until the KB sheet metal became available to “aftermarket” companies. I can only speculate. IH was producing trucks for the war effort. It would seem logical that all of the D sheet metal in their factories would have long been utilized in some way for the war effort. After all, there was a severe shortage of materials as almost everyone was struggling to meet production demands for equipment for the war. Likewise it would seem that a company that produced fire trucks would have been doing so during the war and used up their supply of D sheet metal long before the war ended. It is well known that those first few years immediately after the war were transitional and any number of odd assemblies were showing up. This truck looks to be an example.
L110 owner since 1974, finally rebuilt 2014.