Yes Meerkat, I've watched a few of them, and they can be entertaining at times, but we used equipment that was all handmade custom built. None of the equipment in use today had been invented yet. The only 2 brands of wheel lift, hydraulic heavy duty class 8 wrecker beds in use prior to 1980 were the EKA, made in Sweden, and the Bulldog, made in England. They just weren't suitable for what we did.
I worked OPG Heavy Duty out of downtown Los Angeles, driving for Continental Truck & Towing based in Vernon, Ca. When "Tex" Freeman started Continental in the late 1940's, he began his truck design based around a 3 stage, extended boom assembly that mounted twin 60 Ton winches cabled with 1 inch wire rope. They were war surplus cargo loading assemblies that had originally been designed & mounted on Liberty & Victory ships during WWII. He bought 12 of them, and that became the core recovery fleet at Continental. Peterbilt & Kenworth were the selected cabs, but the frames were stripped, then stretched & double steel railed for strength. The first 12 were all 3 axle, with 44k Hendrickson walking beam suspensions. They all ran Cummings 335 or 350 for power, and twin 5x4 transmissions, with both boxes mounting reversible PTO's, so you could run both winches either in, or out, at the same time & independent of each other. They all weighed in at about 40,000 pounds without gear. Number 40, a 1965 Pete was my personal favorite to drive. A very solid recovery truck. I did work other places, and drove sexier, prettier trucks. But 40 was a workhorse that made tough stuff look easy.
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