My apologies if the term that was used to describe this truck is offensive to anyone, but that’s how these unique Dodge trucks were known in the car transport world. Only thirty were ever built, and here’s their unique story:
Clark Transport asked Dodge in 1971 if they could build a truck with a lower cab height than their rather tall CN900. The response was: sure, as long as you buy thirty of them.
Here’s a Dodge CN900 with a load of vintage cars shot in the late ’80s. The height difference isn’t huge, but enough to make a difference to Clark transport.
And here’s the FWD A-7, which of course used the same Dodge cab, so it was easy to just borrow its front end sheet metal. But note how Dodge lowered the hood and moved the cab cab back and down on the frame. They needed that long hood in order to do that, so that the engine wouldn’t intrude into the cab, as it would if they had just lowered the shorter-hood NC-900.
After Clark was sold in the late ’70s, the “Polish Petes” were scattered to the wind. Some continued to be used as carriers, and this one was converted into a wrecker, seen here in about 1990. It rather lives up to its name; quite the handsome truck.
The secret world of Special Orders is always interesting. I wouldn’t have thought 30 would justify making a new grille and hood, but apparently it did. The mysterious Dodge Airflow makes more sense now, with an order of about 5000.
Presumably Polish because Dodge Main was in Hamtramck.
Couple of questions. First, what’s the story on the composition of that load in the 2nd pic? Late 80s says the caption so must be coming from an auction featuring British roadsters with a smattering of old Chevy pickups.
And is the FWD A-7 tractor front wheel drive or does that mean something else in this context? Oops, just looked again and that straight front axle would seem to preclude actual F.W.D.
FWD stood for the Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, which made trucks from 1909 to 2003 in Wisconsin, initially with all driven axles but later in whatever configuration the customers wanted. Many of their products were fire engines, but they built other commercial trucks too.
The doors are the “giveaway” if you know vintage Dodge trucks, but otherwise the truck in these pictures looks almost generic.
Any idea exactly how much height was saved?
I love this series. I love CC. Thanks Paul. Off to gorge myself at the Gilmore Car Museum today with derK Jr. and one of his friends. The Gilmore re-opens to the public today and — fittingly — the sun is shining.
It’s an extremely impressive museum! South west-central MI. Lots of open space indoors. Enjoy
Within Dodge’s truck division throughout the 50’s and 60’s there was a group of engineers and manufacturing specialists known as the Special Equipment Group. Their job was to facilitate the manufacture of special order trucks, and these car carrier chassis were likely one of the S.E.G.’s products. Some of their creations were relatively simple, such as installing an Allison automatic transmission in a truck model that normally didn’t offer it to some really interesting variations such as 4 wheel drive school bus chassis. I have heard that the 1957 Dodge Swept-Side pickup was an S.E.G. creation. Dodge Truck had a reputation in those days for doing things other high volume truck manufacturers were reluctant to do.
I just shared this on the Peterbilt History Facebook page … I’ll be curious if anyone there is familiar with the term and these trucks. Or gets offended.
As an old truck salesperson with fleet and vocational experience, I LOVE THIS ARTICLE. As I had mentioned in another article about transports, these Dodges did not offer air conditioning and were quite hot in the summertime. I used to see one driver periodically. Every summer he would get out of the cab wearing his pants and a pipe and carrying a book to read whole he waited for me to check in the load. I at that time was working at Chrysler’s New York distribution center in Tappan, NY. The man always got out of the cab glistening. It was tough for those drivers.
Air con even i slightly newer American trucks is nigh on useless in summer I drove a Navistar 9000i during our summer on night swaps and pulling up 15% grades @44+tonnes with only a 430hp C12 CAT generates serious heat and being a RHD conversion guess what just ahead of the driver on the other side of the firewall, thats right an orb glowing red hot all night the turbo, the AC could not compete 30degree c air coming in from the window felt cool.
Those old Dodges were probably no worse, the first truck I drove full time was a cabover Bedford that had a vent on the floor and roll down windows AC was unheard of no power steering either, if you didnt like it do something else,
Inspiration for the Dodge Bighorn?
Well, my cohorts at FB Peterbilt history page came through with this photo of a slope-nose conventional modified for car hauler use by an up fitter (factory authorized aftermarket). The standard truck is next to it for comparison.
And here’s a more conventional long nose Pete, with lowered roof and sleeper. Not sure the dates of these pics, but they’re fairly modern trucks.
Lots of custom work with the big trucks. We used Sterlings for plow trucks from 2002 thru 2009. One year we purchased probably 30 with Cat C12 engines, the exhaust routing off the turbo was going to interfere with the plow equipment, no problem, draw up a new pipe and we’ll get it installed on the main run and we’ll get the pilot truck changed out before we ship it. This fix sort off came back and bit us in the butt. As you can imagine being a plow truck eventually the pipe rusts away and you need a replacement. Unfortunately the pipe is not available. So its off to the exhaust pipe manufacturer with a rusty example to copy and make a jig to build a new pipe and by a bunch to get the price down and have some spares on the shelf. One nice thing about this is we solved a second problem with the new pipe. You had to remove plow equipment to get the original pipe in or out. We made the new pipe a two piece affair so just torch the old one out and install new one without pulling plow equipment.
Further adventures in making pipes, the radiator hoses were actually pipes with short sections of hose to make the connections. Well these rotted out too. The replacement pieces were hard to come by nd there pricing was all over the board and crazy high. We had four different configurations to fix, eight pipes in total. We contacted a local company that makes after market car exhaust and does stainless work. They produced what we needed in a timely fashion and far cheaper than the cost of the replacement pipes from Sterling.
Another time we took a walk thru the yard at the factory looking for a solution for an equipment issue. The application engineer spent a lot of time with us looking over solutions and we shortly came up with a solution. It was always a challenge to get everything stuffed unto the truck and minimize reworking or moving things once we got the chassis. Then the emission laws in 2008 and 2010 came and things got really interesting.
So to cap this off, there is a lot of custom engineering that goes on to this day to get the job done. Thanks to all those engineers that do this work, we probably were a pain in the butt for those guys.
Tell me about it … when I was a rookie design engineer at Peterbilt in the late seventies, custom exhaust (and intake) piping work was very common at the factory. There were so many variables: engine, wheelbase, fuel tank size and locations, cab length, and customer preference. In those pre-CAD days it wasn’t trivial to figure out the miter angles and rotations on the drawing board, and everything had to be drawn up in the few days or maybe a week between receiving the order, determining that no existing exhaust part numbers would work, and the order hitting the production line. Thanks for your comment – glad that you appreciated the efforts, and interesting that it still happens 30-40 years later.
The 3rd photo of that Dodge truck all red would had been a cool truck if they had used it in Duel instead of the Peterbuilt
At one point in the early ’70s Dodge had four(!) generations of conventional truck cabs still in production. The new-for-1972 cab for the D/W100-300, the 1961 cab for the medium-duties D500 and up, the 1956 cab (whose hard points went back to 1948) for the heavy conventionals and the ancient relic of the 1939 cab for the by-then-export-only WM300. No wonder they weren’t making money off medium and heavy trucks!
Those Fiat 128s still look good. I’d forgotten about the 2 door ones. In fact I don’t ever recall seeing one back in the day although they were sold where I live.