Have you ever been an in a pinch and needed an emergency tow? Maybe your barn find broke down on a drive or perhaps you bought a find, but need to get it moved ASAP. If so, we have the truck for you to make those emergency runs. Listed here on eBay, and parked at Danville, California is this 1958 Ford C800 customized by Seagrave into a fire truck with a BIN of $19,500. After serving as a fire truck, it was modified into a car-hauler and is ready to load up your barn finds! How great is that!
As per the owner this 332 HD engine has 54K miles on it and it is running to a 4 speed with an OD. There are new tires and wheels installed that come with the truck.
There aren’t air brakes and the rig is under 26,001 pounds so there is no special license required in California.
The bed is 20′ long and there is a 9,000 pound winch to get your “finds” loaded so you can get them back home (no the car isn’t included with the BIN price). Think of all the cars you could drag home with this rig!
There is a lot of other information and images for you to review if you are interested in the ad. There are some issues the owner points out for your to consider if you desire to have this rig. This would be a great rig for your local car and/or truck club to have and allow the members to go out collecting when needed. “When needed”, well, that’s just about everyday now isn’t it?
Motor-on,
Robert
This would make a great hauler for our vintage Stroppe racing Bronco.
reading my mind Todd!!!
nice looking rig. i like that style BUDD cab. the transmission issue is concern, not sure what it would cost to fix it. interesting find
Nice looking rig! I would want 4 wheel drive to get at a ’72 Malibu I’ve found, its a long ways from a road!
I think you would have to locate barn finds close to home — no one mentioned the gas mileage /Lee
This truck exudes an “I’m a work truck attitude.”
Too many toys, too little money.
More than just air brakes what you also need is HD disc brake at least up front.
I would think that if driven properly, good factory brakes would be fine. They worked fine when the truck was used by a fire dept. The truck probably had way more weight on it than a car would add. Upgrades are always good, but not always necessary. The new driver (buyer), if not a seasoned truck driver would need at least a few pointers from an experienced driver though. I surely would find a mentor.
In love with the 1960 Ford use as an example of how well a car sits on the slant deck.
Mulling over whether I really like the wheels or not, but my eyes will not focus on the truck in that photograph!
Just what I always dreamed of – a Starliner with painted chrome, faucet handles for wheels and rubber band tires…
Even with all that useless trash it’s hard to murder the beautiful lines of a ’60 Starliner!
I think I’m beginning to see a pattern here. Robert clearly has a hankerin’ for cabovers. This is a great “repurposing” of this truck, and probably the best use of a ex-fire truck. ( although, all these upgrades didn’t come cheap.) After the White 3000, these became the most recognizable trucks ever. The Ford “C” series were made for 33 years. I agree with randy, the original brakes should be adequate, although, I’m no fan of juice brakes, it would be a big job to switch this over to air. Not sure if the ” L7″ is a joke ( a square) but a very nice truck,,,for a cabover. Keep those trucks a comin’, Robert.
I worked on school buses of this size and the older ones even with double vacuum boosters were tremble. We had a device called a tapply tester it measured inursha. These old drum brake rigs would be lucky to achieve 60% brake efficiency. Disc brake with air brake system would achieve 100% brake efficiency every time. Hydrolic disc brakes would achieve around 90% brake efficiency. Sure these drum brakes would stop you but it took twice as far and brake fade is a real problem with them. So no thanks I’ll pass.
Inertia terrible hydraulic
Randy thanks for the correction spelling is not my strong suit.
No problem.
I like the truck but that is one beautiful Starliner. That has to be one of the most attractive designs Ford had in the early 60’s. They may not have been my choice but I don’t even mind the wheels/tires so much. Nice car.
Would the new owner have to have a “C” license to legally operate this truck?
26,000 # and under requires nothing more than a class D license. Maybe it’s me but for that kind of $$ wouldn’t you be better off with a rollback with ABS and AC? We had a ’65 (same body) tractor that we used to bring cars to the shredder and it couldn’t do much more than 45 mph, maybe the OD will help.
Is 1958 the first year for the C-Series?
The early Cs are the most distinctive with their quad headlights, which were all the rage in the late ’50s. After a few years Ford went to single round headlights, and they stayed that way for the rest of the model run. I think this one also has the cool Ford Truck logo with the lightning bolt through the sprocket wheel on a red background. You just don’t see stuff like that anymore, and why not?
When I was a kid my father took on a job repairing a C-Series dumpster truck that had rolled over. The cab was too badly twisted to repair, so the owners–who had a considerable collection of clapped-out old trucks–provided a late-fifties cab like this one to swap out. It was the first time that I had ever seen vacuum windshield wiper motors. I wish I had swiped the logo off that cab–if I still had it I’d bolt it to the hood of my Ranger!
A guy in East Brookfield Mass has about 4 of the COE Fords with a shorter wheel base though and an old Ford tractor trailer truck. He wants 3K a piece. The big rig runs maybe one of the COE’s does that was a wrecker and the other ones don’t
How old is this ad ?? I see the comments are from 2015 ? ? I’m sure this rig has sold by now.
Gaudy wheels on Starliner. Love the Starliner though. Dump the wheels, still
Big one. Looks nice.https://fordmanualblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/1958-ford-truck-shop-manual-pdf-download/