Marking up a CGT

[Rolf S. Ask]

We are soon ready with our CGT and have driven right into a enigma.....

How is it to be marked...
The date of MFG is April 7-44 so it would be interessting to mark it as a Canadian unit after D-day, and as one of the units going in to the Netherlands.

Anyone having any ideas? The Commonwealth marking are a real pussle to me, so if anyone can help us getting it right it would be great. And in what range would the census number be?

Rolf

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

It's a 1943 Model C-GT, and so I have no idea which type of FAT body it has. Can someone suggest markings please for a tractor that would have been delivered in the UK [Canadian contract LV1798 by the way so Canadian markings are appropriate] just in time for D-Day etc.

[Rolf S. Ask]

a 44 model David,
and the body is of the 7B2 type.
And the serialnumber plate for the body says:
4408 7B2 2640

I have another plate for another body saying:
4408 7B2 2474

but I don't know anything abouth the vehicle since it has long gone...


Rolf

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Rolf, the first digit of the serial number shows that it is a 1943 MODEL YEAR chassis, although assembled in 1944. Although 1944 Models were started in 1944 Calendar Year, they continued to be assembled until the very end of production in October 1945. There were no 1945 Model Year military trucks, except for some Modified Conventional Pattern trucks.

Although 1940 Model Year trucks were assembled into early 1941, that first year 1941 Model Year trucks started around September 1940 and paralleled the 1940 MY units fopr some months. This proves that it was to do with the year that contracts were placed and not actual assembly year. The fact that some contracts took a considerable amount of time to fulfill completely, sometimes in batches, confirms this point. This is of course totally different to the civilian models where new Model years meant new styling, starting say September in each year and running to August the next.

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

On reflection perhaps Fiscal Year or Contract Year is more appropriate than Model Year. However Model Year is what GM of Canada first used in 1935 as a prefix to the Model Number, and so that's what it was meant to show. What I have not considered is of course body style changes that were effected during each Calendar Year, and surely some Model Year trucks must have had bodies of different styles depending on when they were actually assembled and then made available for bodying? Then again with hundreds of trucks stored and then delivered out-of-phase to the sequential production number, later bodies must have been placed on trucks that in theory were "older" than otherwise identical chassis. We know that engines were assembled in chassis with no respect for sequencing, and apart from the fact that this was a consequence of pulling the first units to hand out of storage, the lack of an identifiable sequence must have had security advantages if any vehicles fell into enemy hands. To that I would add that when it came to it, engines with prefixes indicating a particular intended chassis end-user were installed in a different chassis because of .... shortages? human error?? shipping delays and losses???

[Rolf S. Ask]

it makes sence David.....

[Mark W. Tonner]

Rolf;

Have sent two examples by e-mail to you at the address you supplied.

Cheers