I remember seeing these in my travels back in the day, mainly in Indiana, Michigan, and the likes. Some states like Michigan had very restrictive axle loading limits, requiring lots of…axles to spread the weight. Also, these were ideal for muddy and rural job sites, where a lesser truck fully loaded might well get stuck. Not likely, with this rig.
That’s a Dodge cab up there, by the way.
If I remember correctly, that Grand Prix in the background is a 1976 or 1977 model. (I can’t quite ID the other car in the photo, maybe a ’78 Fairmont?) I think the Dodge cab on this truck dates to the 1958-1960 model, although FWD might have stockpiled some and built the trucks later?
Estimated roughly, the truck is 16+ years old at the time of the photo. And that’s the neat thing about purpose-built trucks. The up front costs are so high that it pays to keep them in service as long as possible. It certainly would have been unusual to see a 1960 model passenger car in regular service in 1976.
The license plate on front appears to be a Michigan bicentennial plate (blue and red background). Those were replaced by the black plates for 1979… but I think the bicentennial plates were pretty much off the road by 1980. So based on the cars in the background and the plate, I’d assume the photo’s from 1978-79.
I moved to Michigan in ’86, but my recollection is that by the time I arrived, Michigan had changed to a “single (rear) plate only” state, and there were folks who put the new white-on-blue plates on the back of their cars and left whatever old plate was on the front of their car in place. It was not uncommon to see a bicentennial plate on the front of the car, and a white-on-blue plate with an entirely different number on the rear.
Good point. And now that I think about it, the Grand Prix doesn’t seem to have a front plate (it would ordinarily be on the front-left), so it could well be 1980+ photo.
Right, that cab was used on light and medium duty Dodge trucks from ’58 to ’60, but it continued on Dodge heavy duty trucks until ’75. I think FWD used it until ’72 or so, before coming out with their own steel conventional cab. Other FWD’s used the International Comfo-Vision cab and the Budd (Ford) C series cab as well.
Wow I had no idea! So the pictured truck could have been built as late as 1972? Astounding! Thanks for that info!
That FWD is from Clawson concrete company, Clawson,MI
Yikes!
Modern day British trucks, which you would think would be rougher & tougher, look…positively wimpish by comparison.
I drive JCB Telehandlers, & this looks remarkably similar to that. Impressive!
That looks like a 7/8 metre bowl, serious weight, Ive been to few building sites in concrete trucks where driven front axles would have been very handy, The rule was get the concrete placer to sign the access section of the docket giving them responsibility for recovering the truck if it got bogged, its amazing just where a 6×4 truck will go loaded with diff locks engaged and decent lug tread drive tyres, and builders get quite disappointed to discover where they wont go.
That FWD rig is an absolute weapon I like it.
At least here in the North East US, almost all the cement companies have switched to rear engine front discharge mixers with AWD. I’m actually curious if this is different in other countries.
I’ve never personally seen mixers of that type here in the UK, although more specialist job sites may use similar? The standard cement mixer here tends to be based on a normal commercial truck such as this DAF.
Euro truck makers offer heavy-duty on-/off road versions of their on-highway models. With straight, heavier front axles, a skid plate, steel lower front bumper, often a reinforced frame (inner liners, for example) and drive axles with hub reduction.
Typical examples are the Volvo FMX, DAF CF Construction (recently replaced by the new XDC and XFC) and Scania XT. Such factory chassis are the preferred underpinnings for dump and concrete mixer trucks.
I haven’t seen a “small” 6×4 concrete mixer like that DAF CF (a nice one!) for a very long time here. The norm throughout Europe these days is an 8×4, in NL a 10×4 like the Mercedes-Benz Arocs below. They won’t get any bigger, as these have reached our national gross weight limit for trucks and combination vehicles. Drum capacity 16 m³/20.9 yd³.
Front discharge mixers are non-existent in Europe and I have yet to see an AWD concrete mixer truck.
And that FWD is a monster!
The smaller ‘on road’ mixers like the DAF I posted are probably more common here than the large or off road ones. Maybe because of the costs for the operators and the fact that most mixers I see here working don’t tend to be used in full off road conditions.
Paul, once the excavators and dump trucks have done their job, temporary pavement arrives at the site. In the form of steel road plates, that is. I never saw a concrete mixer truck doing serious off-road work (unlike dump trucks), so two drive axles will do the job just fine (as in 6×4, 8×4 and 10×4 chassis).
Both dump and concrete mixer trucks are very heavy though, up to 110,000 lbs gross weight. So you better use something that’s up to that daily job.
We have very few around Chicago. They’re pretty limited. You can see them pouring foundations and such, but they can’t do big jobs. They load and unload very slowly, the mouth of the drum is too small. They also don’t do stiff concrete very well. They can’t really do paving machines, concrete pumps, and to do curbs and sidewalks you have to pour in reverse. They are just so specialized.
The order of my posts is mixed up. We have very few front-discharge mixers in chicago
I drove a mixer, an 8×6 (6×6 with a tag axle), also a post-72 with the new cab. 10 yard drums. FWDs, unlike most trucks, had locking differentials, so all the tires would spin together. The newer ones, with 6V92 Detroit Diesels (GMC), could be pretty wild on muddy clay, throwing it everywhere. Especially empty. Not really useful, but where else can you be on the “redline” (“governor” in diesel-talk) in a power drift, with the rear end hanging out — at 5mph?
Our waiver, signed before we crossed the curb line, was for property damage only. “If I break it, you buy it”. We could usually pull each other out.
Clawson Concrete. That logo sure looks familiar, though I can’t say I’ve seen it lately.
Having spent most of my life in Michigan, I can’t recall ever seeing a FWD truck like this – great find!
Never saw many FWD’s in Southern California, but So. Cal. Edison had a big 6X6 similar to this one with really tall platform. I would see it once in a while cleaning high tension insulators. That mixer probably has an 8V-71 Detroit in it judging by the exhaust stacks.
So how many drive axles would we be taking about here? I’d guess the rearmost lift axle isn’t powered – or is it?
If I remember right, these are all wheel drive. That would be the five axles with tires on the ground. The rear tag axle is not powered. It is just for weight distribution.
Now that is a truck! Great photo. Heavy service for sure. Probably, it is powered by a 240 HP Cummins Diesel. In those days the need for power was TORQUE. It is probably road speed geared to 48 MPH. Great find of a photo!
Interesting. I’ve seen a lot of medium duty trucks with light duty cabs over the years, but they always looked like while the lines where the same, the dimensions were different. Is the cab, in this case the cabin, not the hood etc, the same as a pickup?
240 HP in a cement mixer? By the sounds of it, it makes the 36HP VW bus I drove as a parts chaser seem like a hot rod. And with the alleged 240 HP, were they as heavy as it would seem? Seems like urban legend is that the worst thing you want to get hit with is a cement mixer.
240 HP but plenty of torque, which is what was needed to move these heavy trucks.
It’s a small world. A quick search found his younger brother that hadn’t yet gone through puberty and sprouted a second front axle. The best part is the same cement company is still still going strong since 1936. I’ve see their trucks all over the Minneapolis and greater metro area since I was a kid.
The Mack truck configuration below, was what I remember seeing so often for years in Ontario (Canada).
Common misconception that the Cab is a “Dodge”. These truck cabs were produced at Checker Motors Corporation in Kalamazoo, Michigan from 1962 till about 1980. The photo is of cab assembly on Checker Line 2.