HEY the oil in the BS saved the wood!!!!!

 

Saw this photo on ebay. Notice the high stake sides:



Ford 1948 Stake Truck Photo Reprint - eBay (item 380166232343 end time Nov-07-09 10:43:20 PST)

 

The thing about a flat bed (or stake bed) was that it gave you a lot of bed options. I hear a lot of old timers still referring to stake bed trucks as "farm trucks", especially when you get to the larger F-2s, F-3s and so on with longer beds. If you wanted to have just a flat platform you could haul oversized machinery or other unwieldy objects. Or, you could adapt your stake side height, gates or number of sections depending on whether you were hauling crops, hay, cotton, or what have you. Or even manure, no joke. Back in my grandfather's days and obviously before I restored it, our old F-3 was used many times in "low-low" gear with the back gates off to shovel the cow flops on the gardens.