Highway tread tyres

[Grant Bowker]

It may be a Ford, but it looks to have a Chevrolet front axle...

[rob love]

I had a cab11 Ford that had the Chev front axle as well....was quite common on the early Ford trucks.

Re the tires, I read in one of the war diaries at work about the directions to conserve rubber. The early cab11 would have had runflats when made, but these were to be reomoved and replaced with regular tube tires and the runflats only used on the more front line type vehicles (artillery tractor perhaps). They were even to remove one of the two tires on dual equipped truck and run the trucks as singles, again to conserve rubber. The highway tread tires may have been to help conserve rubber, but having driven with the bar tread tires for a lot of years now in this god-foresaken province, I can guarantee they provide better handling in icy conditions.

[David Dunlop]

Trust me to notice the signpost.

Based on a current map of British Columbia, that truck was very likely parked at what is now known as the intersection of BC Highway 93 and what is now called Highway No. 1 (The TransCanada Highway) at Lake Louise. At that point, the angles of the direction signs are a pretty close match to the highway junction. Banff, Calgary and Windermere would be to the East, Golden, Field and Yoho to the Southwest and Lake Louise roughly North, behind the camera.

That raises the question of what was an early CMP Canadian Army Truck doing there in May, 1944. Was there a Training Base in that area? Or perhaps a POW, Work Camp or Internment Camp operating in that area?

As for the tyres, I suspect a set of chains was probably somewhere on board that CMP. Not a place to be without them at that time of year.


David

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by rob love

Re the tires, I read in one of the war diaries at work about the directions to conserve rubber. The early cab11 would have had runflats when made, but these were to be reomoved and replaced with regular tube tires and the runflats only used on the more front line type vehicles (artillery tractor perhaps). They were even to remove one of the two tires on dual equipped truck and run the trucks as singles, again to conserve rubber. The highway tread tires may have been to help conserve rubber, but having driven with the bar tread tires for a lot of years now in this god-foresaken province, I can guarantee they provide better handling in icy conditions.

More photos of CMP trucks with highway tread tyres in the snow in BC, courtesy of Phil Waterman.

453FC4B4-0ECE-4BCF-BE94-EC617917F648.jpeg F656708D-ED5D-43A1-AB6E-1AB50C62635F.jpeg

http://canadianmilitarypattern.com/C...20Columbia.htm