Restored ‘bull nose’ truck is focal point at Merc event

FOCAL point at a recent event held to celebrate 50 years of MercedesBenz commercial vehicles in Ireland was a fully-restored, 1974-vintage 1418 ‘ bull nose’ truck now in the ownership of Ferns man Charlie Nolan whose painstaking restoration has brought it back to good-as-new condition.

Charlie, who has been a member of the technical staff at Camolin-based Sommers Commercials for the past 44 years, confesses to having had a love of trucks, as man and boy.

Knowing of the 1418, which he says began life as a deliverU vehicle working out of the former Texaco oil depot in Wexford town, he sought it out, only to discover it as ‘a heap of scrap’ lying rusting in a yard outside Campile.

In 2000, he began work on what was to be a two-years project designed to bring the truck back to life in a condition as close as he could get to the original.

“While I acquired many of the parts I needed in Campile, all given to me free of charge, I had to travel the length and breath of Ireland looking everywhere for the extra bits and pieces that were missing. Some of these I acquired as new parts through Motor Distributors, distributors of Mercedes-Benz in Ireland” Charlie said.

‘I always wanted a bull nose,’ Charlie said, a truck he agreed was once the ‘workhorse of the Irish economy’ and arguably ‘one of the most iconic vehicles of its kind ever to run on Irish roads.’

Confessing that it was his first ever attempt at restoration, when asked how much the project had cost him, Charlie coyly replied ‘a good few shillings’.

At various points in the restoration, he was assisted by body repair specialists and spray painting experts, Billy Burke from Enniscorthy and Martin Kavanagh from Ferns.

Today, the truck is Charlie’s pride and joy and a showpiece for commercial vehicles enthusiasts keen to spot the numerous technical features that once made it the most sought-after truck on Irish roads.

These included an early version of a sprung cab, an exhaust system modified to divert hot fumes away from its trailer load of petroleum, and a ‘dead man’ braking system that firmly prevented the vehicle from moving when parked.