San Ramon Street Sighting - 1972 GMC C1500 Stepside Pickup

The 1967-72 GMC stepside pickup truck has a special significance to me, because my father owns one. His is a 1971 1500 Custom with a 307 small block V8. This one is a far cry from that, but the two pickups have crossed paths on the road before.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1952 Dodge B-2B Job Rated Pickup

GMC likes to market itself as "Professional Grade". That tagline implies that GMC trucks are built to work hard and will hold up under the stress of whatever job they do. This kind of statement is nothing new. As long as the truck could reasonably live up to the claim, manufacturers would trumpet it loudly. And some even bolted that claim onto the front of their trucks. Long before Dodge spun its truck line off to become RAMs, they built these, the Job-Rated B-Series pickup.

Job Rated was a term coined in 1939 to describe a range of Dodge trucks built for a spectrum of jobs. Lighter duty trucks would serve general pickup use, all the way up to big commercial rigs hauling or towing heavy payloads. Dodge introduced all-new trucks for 1948 with the B Series, beginning with the B-1. These trucks were improved over the pre-war design that, while visually interesting, was woefully outdated by the time it was phased out. The 1948-1953 trucks, in my opinion, are not the prettiest things out there. However, they do have a certain toughness to them.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1950 Chevrolet 3100 pickup

I've always been a big fan of the 1947-53 Chevrolet Advance Design series pickups, and this is one of my favorite examples. It's a 1950 Chevy 3100 pickup in a lovely canary yellow with stained wooden bed extenders emblazoned with the logo of a San Francisco home renovation company. From about 20 feet away, this truck looks darn near brand new. Up close, there are a few blemishes here and there, most noticeably the well-worn steering wheel which is likely original. The body is straight; the chrome is in good shape though it could use some polishing to get rid of a small amount of surface rust in a few places. The paint job looks recent, the wood bed is clean and undamaged, and the Firestone wide whitewall tires with painted steelies and chrome hubcaps and trim rings really set it off.

San Ramon Street Sighting - 1970 Chevrolet CST/10

It's been a long time since a proper pickup truck was shown here. Pickups help keep this great country moving, and I always like seeing an old truck still out there working. My uncle drives a 1969 Chevy C/20 longbed that he bought from my grandfather years ago. My dad owns a 1971 GMC stepside that he bought from my next-door neighbor's father. It was the previous owner's daily driver since 1972. My dad once owned a 1936 Ford pickup, which I later saw at a car show, three decades after he sold it. The then-current owner was still using it as a work truck, and it wore the same Corvette Elkhart Green paint my dad sprayed on it in the '70s. There's something special about the patina earned through thirty, forty, fifty years of hauling and hundreds of thousands of miles covered. The stories such vehicles might tell.