Identifying old fire trucks

In last weekend’s column we carried the two pictures of old fire trucks (repeated below). They were submitted by Pat Walsh. The feedback provided some interesting points.

Paul,

Enjoyed your Saturday photos of fire trucks. It can be very hard to pin down exact years and models of this type of truck because many have bodies custom built for specific purposes by independent contractors.

Since each manufacturer has their own design and because in some cases only the engine and drive train of a particular brand are used, it is often impossible to identify their lineage.

Nevertheless, I was able to identify vehicles shown in the photos. The single picture (above) is a 1949 Chevrolet. In the other photo, the more modern vehicle in the background is a 1963 Chevy Spartan T-80 tilt cab while the older vehicle is a 1937 Ford. Best regards Gary Hebbard We are seeing some interest in the column in these community (municipality) vehicle plates which were commonly seen some years ago. The picture above was sent in by Pat Angel, St. John’s. Pat may do a little research and add to our scant knowledge on the plates. His email follows. The Clarke’s Beach plate was sent in by Burton Janes, Bay Roberts. He would also be interested in knowing a little about the plates. We always understood them to be nothing more than a town’s little “flag-waver’, so to speak. But perhaps they represented payment of a fee of some kind (?)

Hi Paul.

Did you get an answer to this question? Here is one that we have on our wall. They are sold at Livyers Antiques downtown. Apparently they were used as mail addresses and were placed on poles and or fences (?) I missed last weekend’s (November 11th.) edition so maybe this was answered already. Pat Angel No Pat, we don’t know a lot about them yet.