Old School Farm Blog

Hoss...  A California workhorse finds a new home

As a teenager growing up in the early 80's in Bucks County, PA, I had a couple of friends in high school that were really into old Ford Mustangs.  I'm not sure if it was peer pressure, but the next thing I knew, I was convincing my younger brother, Rob to sell our beer can collection so I could buy my first car.  With the proceeds I then purchased a '67 Ford Mustang.  The good news is I survived to talk about it :)

I put off purchasing a truck for the farm, but realized a long time ago that without havaing one for local pick ups and hauling things around, we were very inefficient.  What my wife Deena will tell you is that once I made the decision to get a truck, I then became some sort of obsessed motorhead for a period of months.

Ebay, Craigslist, OldRide, you name it, I trolled the web postings.  For some reason that old Mustang had left an indelible mark upon me, for it wasn't long after looking at old makes and models of trucks that I became obsessed with Ford F-250 pick ups from the 1960's.    

I bid on one from Trenton, NJ, but got mixed up on the ending time for the auction and lost out on it.  Then a guy from California decided to change our agreed to price - that was a deal killer.

Finally, a '66 Ford surfaced on a classic car site, called www.CaliforniaPlayToys.com   According to the owner of the company, Dana, the truck was in good running condition, had fresh paint on the cab, and best of all had little to no rust because it had spent it's life on a farm in California.  It also only had 70,000 miles on it.  

I took a chance ordering sight unseen but I had a good feeling about Dana - he seemed a very straight shooter, and proved to be as he ended up sending us some parts we needed to make the 4WD operable at no cost. Hoss has lived up to our expectations and then some, as it appears to be a rare model with a special drive train.  There are probably only a couple of hundred of these left around. Best of all it runs strong and starts right up.

The bed is not original, so our plan is to do a lot of hard work w/ that bed now, and then eventually remove it and replace it with "old school" looking flatbed with wooden sides - a real farm truck.  We also plan to sell the over-sized and somewhat tacky wheels and tires and replace them with more appropriate ones that go with the vehicle.

Owen and Coleman, our twin six year old boys are bonkers for the truck and are constantly looking to ride in the bed over to the garden area or up the dead end road to nearby "Tanner's Falls".  They refer to the red upholstered bench seat in the cab as a "sofa".  The truck has no power steering or power brakes, so it will be quite a few years until these guys are able to manage any off road driving.