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Frank Schneider was only 12 years old when he learned to drive a 1950 Chevrolet pickup. He never figured it would take so much work to have his son, Joe, learn to drive one, too.
“It was a 1950 half-ton Chevy that a neighbor on the farm had,” recalled Schneider, a resident of rural Sherwood, Wis. “And his brother had a ’49 1-ton, that had a 9-foot box. The half-tons only had a 6-footer. We used to haul grain in that, and I was fortunate, I lived next to the farm. The other guys were down the road a ways so when we were combining you always wanted to get there first and get the [half-ton] because you only had to shovel a 6-foot bed off the back. If you got [the 1-ton] you had almost twice as much to shovel! [laughs].”
About 35 years later, young Joe — who was only about 11 at the time — was getting eager to drive. His dad joked that he would need to learn to drive on a ’50 Chevrolet pickup like the old man had. “A couple weeks later in the [newspaper], lo and behold, there was a ‘50 Chev for sale,” Frank chuckles. “That was in 2000 we got it. A guy up the road that had a repair shop hauled it home with his wrecker, and I think that was the fastest the truck ever went. Well, we brought it home and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, this is a lot of work’.”
The old 3100 series half-ton pickup had clearly been a work truck for at least one business in its past, but it had long ago been put out to pasture — literally. The Chevy had last been legally licensed in 1970, and Schneider figures it probably sat outside for about 30 years without moving. “I think he was going to make a rat rod out of it…It had sat out behind their place for all that time. It was in pretty rough shape.”
It didn’t take long for Schneider to accomplish his main goal, however. He got the truck running and let Joe learn to drive in the field behind their house. “I think there were two stuck valves in it, but once we got everything loosened up she popped right off,” he says. “The boys put over 100 miles on it out here in the cow pasture over the years,” Schneider says.
read more: https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/car-of-the-week/car-of-the-week-1950-chevy-3100-pickup
