Found these down in Mississippi.
They appear to be in good repair and working for a living. Long time since I've seen a Hough without a cab.
They are probably keeping them running because they are 6x6 trucks. Hate to be the person that has to drive one of those old trucks they look pretty bare bones basic. Most redimix trucks running in this area are 3 years old to new with the oldest ones being 1987.
It appears that there are three different brands of mixers on the three trucks.From left to right it looks like a Smith or maybe a Challange for the first one,I would say Jeager for the second and it looks like a Rex on the right. Most of the old Oshkosh mixers of that vintage that I have seen were running Detroits.Thanks for the pics.Ron G
I actually wasn't trying to get the loader, but hey sometimes you just get the unexpected.
When I was a kid there was a company called Tyson that ran Oshkosh mixers like these, only an older style. No one around here uses rear discharge mixers anymore, they are all fronts.
The rest of the concrete suppliers in the states north of me fought it for years,like a conspiracy almost to stay with the backup mixers but I am starting to see some front discharge up there now.I am not sure how far north they have gotten,I still don't recall ever seeing one around Ellsworth but I only go up there for a few days each year around thanksgiving and can't see everything.I thought they would never get them in Mass but I am seeing them now in the last few years. Of course the advantage to them for the casual reader is the ease with which they can place concrete cutting back in the labor required for the contractor.That is significant of course.The 4x6 units do very well offroad and getting more elevation to add pitch allowing the concrete to flow is a simple matter of getting one front wheel up on something,much easier than raising the back end of a tandam axle truck. The disadvantages to the changeover were that all the suppliers more or less had to do it at the same time to remain competitive.The company I worked for was one of the holdouts and we suffered for years,I don't know how we survived.In fact we almost did not.We bought a fleet of old junk Advance mixers from some place in Indiana and sold all of our nice Macks to someone in Long Island. The early front discharge mixers were sold by Rite-Way and like any new product that has not benefitted from evolution they were a maintainance nightmare.They were breaking everywhere and often and so unstable that they would even lose control travelling to the job and roll over as often as not. The maintainance issue was mostly why the concrete suppliers were hesitant to make the changeover,more so than the initial investment to buy the trucks. The downtime and squads of mechanics needed to replace rare and expensive parts were too risky so initially only the big suppliers could afford to make the investment but the handwriting was on the wall,they would be the wave of the future in time to come. Some suppliers still have the backup mixers as "backups" and often use them for the pump jobs where the front discharge has no real advantage. The new product lines from the current front discharge mixer suppliers are robust,efficient units that perform well at a reasonable cost to operate. The one downside when making the investment is that the old worn out front discharge mixer is just that.You cannot make a dumptruck out of one like you could with the backup trucks so for the most part they are just a source of old parts if there are any on them that you can still use for anything.Ron G
That's not completely true. This type of stuff goes to Port Newark, Baltimore, Brooklyn Piers and heads over to places far away to start a whole new life sometimes... I am heavily involved with the process quite frequently, so I get to see it first hand. I also carry a full array of tools to help some of this junk "make the trek" on and off a trailer to be parked next to the ships.:cool2
Ron I agree with your point on refitting the chassis but add this just as a point of interest. The local quarry here turned one of the Advance front discharge mixers into a yard water truck. The drum has become a tank and they made a sprinkler boom of black pipe out the back. It's gravity fed, I haven't been close enough to see how they connected the drum to the boom. Pretty clever though!
Tilcon here at the New Britain plant has designed and built an asphalt curb feeding machine from the older front discharge mixer chassis and I think they have patented it as well.It is pretty slick. Try to imagine a large sander with the discharge end to the front feeding a motorized screw similar to the one you would find in a curb machine and the chute hydraulics would control the direction and elevation of the discharge end of the screw.I think they feed it into a rubber boot which drops it into the curb machine on the run.It seems to work pretty well but you can only use just so many of them.It has a motorized canvas to cover the load just like a dump truck uses.Ron G
I didn't even know they made "fronts" anymore. Out here on the west coast everything is done with pumps or backups.
It is the same here on the West Coast of B.C. its all rear discharge trucks and boom pumps. Almost 90% of house foundations are pump placed even the smallest job that requires 2-3 yards a line pump is used.
I drove one of those for three years. I kinda like it. You did feel like you were taking up the whole road with them when you first started driving them but you got use to it.
Last time I saw one of them, was about 2-3 yrs ago, it was a road truck, hauling a semi. It was in nice shape, the owner really looked after it, and it had been extensively refurbished in recent years. There were quite a number of Oshkoshes imported into Western Australia in the late 1960's/early 1970's .. but they were a little light on power, with 3306's topping out at 270 HP, and 44,000 lb rear ends being the biggest you could get. They were essentially just a single trailer hauler, or a tri-axle low-loader (lowbed) hauler .. with maybe a quad trailer at the outside. Their relatively low GCM (GCW) meant they disappeared fairly rapidly .. because, in recent years, if you haven't got a 80 or 100 tonne GCM, your hauling ability is very limited. Road train GCM rating is pretty much the go for any prime mover (truck tractor), around here nowadays, and if you haven't got it .. your truck is a has-been, and is limited to light local or farm work. I don't know where all the Oshkoshes went, they just all seemed to disappear from the roads in the late 80's. If one appears now, it draws a curious bunch of onlookers. Those small cabs, despite being tough, were not popular with drivers on distance work .. and our heat made them even less popular. What I'm saying, is .. those cabs are cramped and hot .. even more so than a B-model Mack (if that's possible .. ) .. and the bigger and better cabs of the European trucks, Western Stars .. and even Frightliners .. soon made driving Oshkoshes on a par with pedalling a Model T Ford. Kalgoorlie Towing, in the West Oz goldfields, still run two Oshkoshes .. one's a tandem wrecker, and the other is a single drive prime mover .. click on photo gallery to see some pics .. http://kaltow.com.au/oshtt.htm
I just bought this one, or am in the process of buying it . 1963 with a 230 or 250 Cummins 20 speed 2 stick tranny full time 4 wd.
Steve this is not exactly the same as you are talking about but I have seen a few Oshkosh front shoot mixers turned into water trucks. Check this out: http://www.machinerytrader.com/list...6096355&guid=86244EFCF87A4890BF524E1C807F3133 I think that it would be a good second life for a front shoot mixer chassis. I have poured alot of mud out of a front shoot but the local concrete suppliers don't have anymore of them now. Front shoots were very common in these parts a few years ago and were invaluable in pouring flatwork - the driver was right there with you, where you were pouring.
atgreene I just bought this one, or am in the process of buying it . 1963 with a 230 or 250 Cummins 20 speed 2 stick tranny full time 4 wd. There Was a place in Lawrence Mass. rebuilding these Old Oshkoshes. They used to advertise in the new england edition of Truck Buyers Guide Hope this helps
I bought mine at S. A McLean's in Limerick Maine. I do a lot of dealing with Steve and couldn't resist when the opportunity arose. http://www.s-a-mclean.com/
theres a few of them around here.
I like those Mack 4x4's with the single rear tires. I had a big corp center contract about 10 years ago and I darn near bought one from an airport in Michigan, but it was too far gone to make roadable and do the things I wanted to do. I thought it would make an excellent sander truck-just mount a sander box right to the frame, 12' plow to the front.
Don't want to hijack this thread from a long time ago, but I always see those trucks around and always wondered where they came from. I didn't see a curbing machine with them when they repaved my street, so I thought it was an all-in-one setup. Thanks Ron.
the old qshkoshes are still pretty popular around the suburbs of chicago. meyer material has a large fleet of them. they look awesome on road and work awesome off road.
What color were the trucks you bought? I work for the largest ready mix company in Indiana & our trucks are red & white, it sounds like you got some of our old ones.
I think they were red and white.I remember that we changed our company colors at that time to red and white so it seems logical that that was what they were.We survived the transistion to the new concept but just barely. We changed from a truck with high availability to a chassis that was liable to fail at any moment but we had to make the move or fold.I sure hated to see all our Macks go but we sold them all at once.They were mostly DM800s by that time,our B models had been converted to dump trucks.Ron G
Ron, who were you working for at the time? I believe Suzio still has their B-model mixers hiding in the quarry with the rest of the old equipment.
I was working for your local supplier right there in Plantsville Stretch.Ron G