COLLECTOR CLASSICS
A ‘Model A’ Ford family
It was quite a sight to see the 1931 Ford flat-deck truck pull into the Maple Ridge waste-transfer station with a load of recyclables and garbage.
This truck wasn’t going to end up in the dump; it was delivering to the dump.
“I drive it all the time,” says owner-restorer Farrell White. “People do double-takes when they see me on the road in the rain and snow. Driving them is what they are for.”
He then tells me there are more Ford Model A vehicles at his father’s home in nearby Pitt Meadows. Arrangements are made to visit.
There I discover Frank White and his son Farrell have a version of the Model A for each of the four years they were built. The 1931 Ford AA ton-and-a-half truck, a 1930 half-ton pickup, a 1929 two-door sedan and a 1928 rumble seat coupe.
The garage looks like the back shop of a Ford dealership from the early ’30s. The partly disassembled pickup truck is nearly stripped down to its bones, and parts from the truck and spares are all over the shop. Frank says his father encouraged him to get rid of the 1935 Chevrolet sedan he bought from him for $15 before he was old enough to drive and buy a Model A. They are more reliable and easy to fix, the father told his son. So in 1951, young Frank paid $150 for a 1930 Model A coupe from a used car lot in Moose Jaw. It was a great car and he courted his future wife in it.
But a move to Winnipeg to become a travelling salesman for an automotive brake and clutch company brought the need for a more modern car — paid for with a company car allowance. The old coupe was parked and subsequently sold to a teenager for $20.
“It was my wife’s favourite car and she never got over that,” Frank White recalls.
With this in mind, in 1964 he stopped when he saw a 1928 Model A special coupe parked at a farm an hour north of Winnipeg. The farmer explained that he had sold the Model A already. But Frank persisted and said he would pay $5 more than the $20 that had been offered for the derelict coupe. He roped it to the rear bumper of his company car and dragged it 100 kilometres home to Winnipeg.
He did get it running and drove it in a local parade. But he did little else with the coupe because of his travelling salesman’s job and four children to feed.
However, 54 years later, he still has the coupe. It’s fully restored and on the road year-round, largely because his son Farrell followed his father’s interest in the Ford Model A.
When the family moved to the Vancouver area in 1967, the Model A coupe followed. It was shipped out on a car carrier. Frank stripped the car and stored the valuable parts in suitcases in the basement of their new home in Port Coquitlam. His children learned to drive the shell of the car, which still ran in the backyard.
When the family moved to a farm in Pitt Meadows and needed a truck, Frank brought home the pieces and taught his son about restoration as he built a 1930 pickup to haul feed for the animals. Years later, the father and son would restore the 1928 Model A coupe Frank purchased in 1964. Frank had become a licensed plumber and knew how to weld. Farrell applied his mechanical skills to the restoration.
“It was good working together. It got our relationship back on track,” Farrell says, referring to some father-son conflicts dating back to his teenage years.
Sadly, Farrell’s mother died before the coupe was finished. It was her wish to go for a drive in the restored car that reminded her of the coupe she rode in as a teenager while dating Frank.
With a Model A coupe and pickup truck in hand, the White family wanted to round off the collection with a 1929 sedan. Originally from Osoyoos, the two-door sedan they restored was purchased in Burnaby.
Next, Farrell set his sights on a real truck: A Model AA truck with a ton-and-a-half carrying capacity. Not easy to find, but he ended up with the parts of three 1931 trucks to be used to make one restored example. Remarkably, the truck body purchased from a collector in Vancouver, Wash., had been used in Egypt as an airport fuel truck. It had the remnants of Shell Oil’s yellow and orange colours with lettering in Arabic.
Father and son spent two years putting that truck together and it earns its keep hauling construction material, furnishings and other household items to Farrell and Sue White’s home in Pitt Meadows, as well as unwanted items for recycling or disposal.
Now the father-and-son team are re-restoring the 1930 pickup truck that led a hard life on their farm in Pitt Meadows.
“It got pretty beat up and needs lots of work,” Farrell White says while looking at the bare body in his father’s shop. “We’ll get it going and put it to work. Model A Fords are meant to be driven.”