Cornbinders

Stephen over at Standing Outside Looking In mentions riding in his uncle’s International pickup http://dixiecritter.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-ramble.html That brings back fond memories of various Cornbinders of my youth and early adulthood.

The 50’s and 60’s Internationals had better suspensions than the other pickups. You could cruise down Northwest Colorado dirt roads at a comfortable 50 mph. Ford/Chev/GMC/Dodge/Studebaker pickups would beat you up at any speed over 30 mph. What Internationals were  known for was poor fuel economy and, in latter years, body rot. Bad body rot.

I had a 1955 model ½ ton for a few years. No factory turn signals. Armstrong power steering. It did have a heater and radio. I loved that truck. The wife, not so much, especially going over frost heaved roads when she was seven months 

preggers.

Being basically cheap (not frugal, cheap), I liked being able to buy Internationals at attractive prices. We had a 1960 Travelall  with a 70% Bondo body. It did have power steering. My then wife, who was hard on machinery, hated me for making her drive it to work. Her coworkers were quite impressed to see a 5’4” woman wheeling that beast into the parking lot.  Finally, I relented and traded it in on a 1966 Mustang, V-8, automatic, and a/c. She was back in love (for awhile). The new owner of the Travelall called me a week after the trade. He was very upset. Seems he backed into a pole and most of the body below the window sills fell off. Must have been cheap Bondo.

My last Travelall was a 1968 4x4 with aftermarket locking differentials. That beast would go anywhere except past a filling station. My territory was Utah, Wyoming, Western Colorado, Eastern Nevada, and Northern Arizona. That truck was handy in the winter time.

International was in deep trouble by 1970. They started having Checker build their bodies which were worse than the ones they were making. While they had something like 25% of the Class 8 market, and a strong agriculture division, they mismanaged themselves into a deep hole. Ford bailed them out, not wanting a foreign company to buy them (a hot topic in that era). Strangely, International stopped building pickups, and soon after the Ford ½ ton became the sales leader. That bailout was also the start of Navstar engines. The first 6.9 diesels were a Ford design built in a Ford built factory.

Nothing International builds today interests me. I loath the way their medium duty trucks ride. I do like the appearance of the current International trucks, especially some of their Class 8 offerings.

That is a handsome truck!