This truck is a one-ton, with a nine-foot step-side pickup bed, and could be set up with duals in the back. The engine is a 240 cubic inch straight six. The transmition is a four speed manual on the floor with a extremely low granny gear. A custom, weather-tight nine-foot canopy with rack comes with it.

Among the unusual features of the truck are an external steel box that used to house the two-way radio (now used to carry jack, tools, jumpers, etc.).

The truck also has 19 1/2 inch rims which give it awesome ground clearance. The Forest Service spec'd these trucks to carry big loads on unpaved mountain roads where many of the stream crossings were fords instead of bridges. This truck doesn't have 4x4, but if you load it and put in the granny gear, you can go just about anywhere. I personally drove it through the great Sumas Flood of 1991.

Mechanically, the truck is in good condition. The engine is strong, as are the brakes, tranny, rear end and front end. There is little or no rust. It is street legal and licenced through June 2009. (I just paid the annual $51 license fee and drove it 80 miles with a load to the garbage dump and back.)

The downsides are that the bed needs replacing, the gas gage doesn't work and the rubber seals and gaskets around the windows are shot, which has led to water damage to the inside of the cab. The funkiest thing about the truck are the gate hinges I had welded on to hinge the original hood when the original hinges broke in the late '90s. For this reason, you have to use a stick to hold up the hood.

This is a good old truck, and it still has life in it. It could make a good farm or rough work truck, either with the nine-foot pickup bed or a flatbed. It could also be a herky and economical first truck for a young driver.

Collectors should give it a look too because there aren't many trucks out there like this one, and even fewer that are in this kind of condition.

There were never a lot of these trucks built, and virtually all of those vanished long ago into the scrap heap as farm or rough work trucks. Of the few survivors, very, very few retain the original Forest Service set up, as this truck does.

As vintage Ford truck enthusiast lingtodd emailed me recently, "Very nice truck, should go to someone who will restore it. You are correct, this is only the second one I have seen in 40 years of driving old Ford Trucks!"

In fact, Johnny Canuck opined on the fordtruck.com forum that this "may be the rarest of the slick pickups."

The steel box that used to house the two-way radio (with tubes, no less) now holds tools, jack, etc. You can see the original Forest Service light green paint showing through the dark green I had the truck painted in the early 1980s.

Like everything in this truck, the rear bumper is extremely beefy. This truck is made of pre-Tet Offensive American steel, not the ferric foil they use in contemporary trucks. The moss is beefy too.

The funkiest thing about the truck are the gate hinges I had welded on to replace the original hinges for the hood when they broke in the late '90s...