This is one of my all time fondest memories of my childhood. The old Mr. Softee truck, the music it played, and how gorgeous the truck was.

This is awesome! (truth be told, all of the trucks on here are).

 

When my kids finally realized that the truck that came through the neighborhood playing music was really selling ice cream they were really, really mad at me.
I had told them for years that it was just a Music Truck.

I'm such an abusive father....LOL

 

Hey Bobby,
I told my kids it was the Fish Truck. They never bugged me to get ice cream.... My oldest daughter
still resents that we tricked her for so long...

Ben in Austin
1950 F1

 

I live on a small dead-end private dirt road. Several years ago in summer an ice cream truck decided to take a chance to drive down it. Bingo, he made about $75 in sales from my astonished neighbors who never had seen one on the road before. I'd been here 20 years before that day and it never happened. The ice creams were about $4 apiece and just the basic varieties but man was that a treat.
The same guy still comes a couple of times of year. He is a DJ at a local jazz radio station and one cool dude.
One day my wife and I were in the living room with the TV on and air conditioner going full blast and without saying a word she jumps up and runs like hell toward the door and out she goes. I thought the house was on fire or the cat was getting mauled by a pack of coyotes or something. I chased after her outside to see what the hell was going on. Yep, the ice cream truck was headed down the road toward the house. I have no idea how she heard it so far away, like radar or something. She didn't even stop to get money. (I had to cover that part)
Ben and Bobby...she was traumatized as a kid too and never allowed to get an ice cream when the truck was around so she sure makes up for it now!! We have only one kid that lives on our road, it is all the adults that come out for the truck and jump around like 5-year olds. Funny to watch. Good times.

The fish and music truck. Now that was a frugal man's stroke of genius.

 

its fun we keep busy cruising the neighborhood's. And small events.

 

 

I have this picture in my computer files. I love it. I assume it is a Ford factory promo pic. What color is that truck? And who would haul grain with a short bed F100?

 

Does that pickup slide sideways? Picture defies all laws of physics.

 

It looks like PG&E brown.

 

I see what your saying..... but the Ford tractor and the "Ford" combine is sitting still unloading it's hopper.

 

If I recall correctly we've seen this pic before and dissected it as a staged photo for promotion, not necessarily a true working image. You're not going to haul much grain in a half ton pickup. A true grain truck would be much larger, such as an F6/600 with a hopper bed.

 

But not many people are going out and buying an F6 for small job work - Seeing that pic with all the Ford equipment might get Dad in the mood to buy one to run down to the Feed Store and visit with the Boys for the latest news

 

Plenty of F-2s and F-3s were used on the farm for hauling crops and feed. You see a lot of these trucks with the center of the tailgate cut out and a sliding piece of metal covering the hole. I was talking to an old farmer a local car show that I had my F-2 in who told me when he was a kid on the farm his dad had a truck like mine and he made a "T" out of 4x4s with an eye bolt at the long end. He'd lay the T down in the bed, wide top in the front of the box, and would load the bed with hay. Once filled he'd back into the barn, hook up one end of a chain to a barn post and the other end to the eye bolt in the end of the T and drive the truck forward to empty the load of hay. I've seen a lot of old trucks, big and small, that inventive farmer altered to fit their needs with what they had.

 

No doubt whatever means the farmer had to get the work done, that's what he did. All I know is from my experience of seeing wheat harvest in my neighborhood, it looked a lot like this. I remember seeing empty trucks lined up behind the ones getting loaded and work went non-stop.

Based on the 52 Washington license plate, this truck was brand new in this photo.