1983 Dodge D-50 Pickup

5/25/01

Well, it's been some 5 months or so since the last post and I'm sad to say that this may very well be the last post on this page as Freetruck is no more. They hauled her away today. I had some good times in this truck. I courted my wife in it. I chased school bus accidents in it. I hauled motorcycles in it. I parked it for months on end and it was always up and ready at a moment's notice. I went to drive-in movies in it. I even helped someone film a movie in it. I also loaned it to at least a dozen people and helped quite a few people move with it as well.

I thank Ted and Noelle for giving it to me in the first place, Jon for helping me keep it on the road in the few instances it gave me trouble, and the various junkyards that sold me stuff that kept it moving. The best thing about this truck was how snug if felt while driving it. It was cozy. It had good snap and it could haul quite a bit of junk. I managed on a couple of occasions to get two motorcycles in the back, and I know I hauled at least 1000lbs of construction waste in it to the dump. I hauled snow in the winter, bikes in the summer and various other junk year round.

I sure am going to miss it.

1/3/01

You know, it's funny. I've had this page up for over a year now and I have come to realize that I haven't done a damn thing to this truck all year. It seems more of a pity that I'm going to have to get rid of Freetruck soon. It's just falling apart. I have a new(er) truck now and I just can't see having this one around. It's becoming too much of a pain in the butt to keep it going. It sits outside with three flat tires and a motor that idles around 2200rpm. Not good. The tin worm has it good and I know I'll be well rid of it. The problem is that I really don't want to get rid of my buddy. Oh, well. I may as well just do it. Who knows, maybe I'll get $25.00 for it at the junkyard.

Over 5 years of use for next to nothing. So long, buddy.

It was built by Mitsubishi (They called theirs the Mighty Max) for Chrysler. My friends Ted and Noelle had it, but had an accident in it and it sat in their garage for about a year and a half. One night at a party a story went around about a friend who had just had a car towed away by the city and they just left it at the impound lot. They had wanted to get rid of the car and the city was only happy to tow it away when leaf sweeping time came around. Ted was interested in getting rid of this truck that way. I heard "give" and "truck" in the same sentence and since I had motorcycles and needed some way to get them around when they were broken, I asked Ted about the truck. He said get it out of his garage before the week was out and it was mine. He didn’t have to ask me twice.

I threw a battery, fuel pump and a junkyard carb at it and drove it out of his garage. My friend Jon and I straightened out its body damage with a come-along and a telephone pole. We sledgehammered the hood down and used a slide hammer to “fix” the front fender. Before it hit the street, it needed some headlights on the passenger side, so I got a set off another truck like it at the junkyard. I’ve been treating it like dirt since then and it seems to live for abuse.

At about a year of ownership, I replaced the front brakes, and last year was the gas tank and transmission. The year before that was the exhaust system (damn emissions tests). Was it foolish to put a $200.00 junkyard tranny in a truck that wasn’t worth anything to begin with. Yes, because it still is a truck and a truck is still useful and to get another truck going was going to cost me more than $200.00.

I have to mess with the wiring from time to time and the tinworm is steadily eating the doors, cab and bed of the truck. The front fenders flap in the wind when I go down the road. I can see through the floor to the left of the brake pedal and at full lock, the front wheel rubs against the rusty patch. The bottoms of the doors just aren't there anymore and the passenger door needs to be pulled back towards the rear of the truck to get it to close. The door handles on the inside of the truck work sometimes and the driver's door handle has been replaced with a length of lamp cord. The charging gauge doesn't do much anymore, the fuel tank is full at 1/2 on the gauge (the tank I got from the junkyard has a bad sender or something) I’m not sure the fins on the radiator are even attached anymore, but that’s not so big a deal as it ran cool to begin with. It keeps decomposing, and I keep driving it.

Fortunately for me, this truck has a full frame under it. The body and cab can decompose as much as they like, just so long as the springs don't come through the bed, I'm happy. So far I’ve covered about 40,000 miles in it and I suspect that if the frame holds out, I’ll probably get one more year out of it. I've been saying that ever since I got it. Wish me and it luck.

Everyone should be issued a truck like this. It's more than a truck, it's a tool.