from the grain pattern they look like they are quarter sawn. Quarter sawing produces the most stable and durable wood, but with little grain pattern and most harvest waste from the log. Flat sawing produces the most spectacular grain patterns but is prone to warpage.
As weathered as they are I wouldn't hazzard a guess on species.

Here's a good description of the 3 most common lumber sawing patterns and the wood produced: http://www.advantagelumber.com/sawn-lumber/

 

You know, I have been thinking... are we wrong to call the wood used originally on the pickup beds was SOUTHERN Yellow Pine? I believe it was NORTHERN Yellow Pine grown in Michigan. What is the difference between Northern and Southern Yellow Pine, besides the place where it is grown?

As stated earlier, it was old growth (slow growing) pine with close rings which makes it harder than today's Southern Yellow Pine which is used a lot for pressure treated lumber.

 

They are two different species of pine trees. Southern yellow pine is much harder than Northern white pine (AFAIK there is no Northern yellow pine). Old growth SYP was used a lot for factory floors where it needed to stand up to a lot of wear but was not prone to splitting or splintering. Most Southern carpenters have encountered old air dried SYP in buildings where it is near impossible to drive a nail into it without it bending. The finish floors upstairs in my 1939 house are SYP and they have held up nearly as well as the oak hardwood downstairs.
Reclaimed old growth SYP is is in demand and quite valuable today.

 

I believe that the Michigan stuff is called white pine & indeed, is very soft, not bed material. I'm sure any locally grown wood that may have been used on Michigan trucks would be oak.

BTW, wouldn't swamp cypress make a good bed? Very durable, looks nice, probably too expensive...

 

depends if you want a "looker" bed or a "service" bed, there are a large number of useable woods.

 

I have used a lot of "old growth" yellow pine, but only when a client was paying for it. There is a yard in Gonzales Texas that has nothing but old growth pine. He buys it up from all over the country. I have been there several times to purchase for clients projects. One time there I saw a stack of 12" x 16" beams that were over 50 feet long. They came out of an old warehouse that was built in the early 1900's in Philly. There are several kinds of yellow pine including Loblolly, Longleaf, Bull, and Jack pine. They were used widely for flooring, usually plain sliced to show the grain. Fir and Spruce were also used often but usually they were quarter sawn or rift cut for flooring for less movement. Sugar pine, western white pine, and rocky mountain white pine were not as strong as YP and were seldom used for any kind of flooring.

 

I don't want to get caught up in minutia. I think we all agree that Ford used yellow pine for the bed floors. I believe that Ford owned stands of forests in Michigan where they got the lumber they needed. I have read this in more than one source.

I have found several websites that talk about selling old Northern pine. Here is one that says this: "Northern Yellow Pine was harvested for early American colonial buildings and no longer grows in this hemisphere." Here is the link: Reclaimed Northern Yellow Pine Flooring | StoneBrook Flooring
So you are correct about "there is no such thing today."

Here is a question: did Ford assemble all the bed floors in Detroit and ship them assembled to the various assembly plants where all they had to do was drop them into place on the line and then paint the truck bed, wood, and skid strips and all???

 

I don't know if it was urban legend, but the story i read said that HF was so cheap he required suppliers to ship parts in wood crate that he specified the sizes of the wood pieces and even where holes were to be drilled so he could recycle them directly into his vehicles.

 

I recall an article not long ago, that showed detailed information about Ford recycling the crates. In the article (I will try and find it), it indicated that the crates were made of red oak, and the article included documents from the era. There could be differences in the materials used, based on the production of the era, being newly post war, and prepping for another.

 

I do know that Ford designed his 8N tractors a certain size (length I think) not for engineering reasons but so he could fit more on railroad cars and thus save shipping expenses...

Anyone else know this story? I don't remember the specifics (# of inches, how many tractors per car, length or width...)

 

Just saw an article last night on Fords website saying how even back in the Model T-A era, parts were shipped in specific crates, and the wood was reused in the assembly of the vehicles.

 

Henry was a smart business man first. Everything he did was to streamline the production of cars, trucks and tractors. But he did pay better than most. I read that he bought the forest land in Michigan for the maple, mainly for the woodies. He got mad at the coach builders who he felt were ripping him off. I am sure in those forests, at that time, there was lots of pine too. He managed the forest products very well, not just taking all the best trees at once. The way he managed the forests is now practiced almost the same way by the forest service for optimum production and forest life.