Tuesday, January 12, 2010

One of a kind Ol Yeller Fire Truck


One of the interesting things in my dad’s toy collection, is a late fifties, early sixties, yellow peddle car. It’s a fire truck with ‘Roseville Fire Department’ on the sides.

As you can see from the pictures, it’s a Hamilton Steel Products fire truck, built on a jeep chassis. The odd thing is, it is yellow. My research guy has started looking into this and has found that Hamilton only made red and blue fire trucks.
So my research guy has started contacting fire departments.
It looks like Hamilton might have made a yellow fire truck for the Roseville, Michigan Fire Department. The local fire chief may have a picture of this car on display, years ago, in the firehouse. With any luck, he can find the picture and send us a copy.

Someone at the Roseville, California fire department also emailed him, saying that they remembered a yellow fire truck. They are checking with some of their ‘old timers’.

It will be interesting to see what the rest of the research leads to and ‘how one of a kind’ this peddle car turns out to be.

If it truly is one of a kind, the value increases.

Addendum - Feb 2.

It's nice when experts give you the value of their experience. My research guy has found out that the front and rear ornaments are not standard on the Hamilton trucks (which is what we figured). Also, the hose reel is non-standard. Further checking revealed that the lettering is vinyl. Though the yellow paint is the only paint, there is a little bit of red over spray by one of the peddles.
So, we figure that someone(possible who worked for one of the fire departments), took a red Jeep fire truck, stripped the paint off and had it repainted in yellow.
It's still a good looking truck.

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