M809 5-ton in Canadian service

[servicepub (RIP)]

I received the following request at my Service Publications e-mail address but cannot assist. Can anybody provide insight?

My name is Carl Schulze and I am currently working on a book on the U.S. manufactured M809 5-ton 6x6 Truck Series. However, during my research I came across pictures of M809 trucks in service with the Royal Canadian Army based in Germany. The pictures show cargo trucks, tractor trucks, wreckers and dump trucks. Believe it or not further investigation remained futile and I was not able to find any facts about the trucks. You are one of my last possibilities to learn a little bit more.


Do you have any information at hand. Were the trucks given a special designation or did they run under the U.S. numbers (M813/M814/M816 and so on). The bonnet differs from that of the U.S. vehicles, did the Canadian ones have a different engine fitted? Where they manufactured in Canada under license or bought from the U.S.?

[rob love]

I can answer some of those questions. Canada bought the trucks out of the US. The M- series designators remained the same as the US trucks. We had the cummins 250 engines in ours, which would seem to have been the standard engine for the mid 70s produced 5 tons. All of our M800 series 5 tons were of approx 1976 vintage, and were manufactured by AM General. The diesel fleet was primarily in the field units and Germany, while the reserve units and base units in Canada pretty much all operated the much older 50s vintage 5 ton gas trucks. There were some exceptions, such as regular force service battalions who still got stuck with fleets of the old gassers.

The reason for the modification of the hood was to allow space for the jake brakes, a modification done at second line units in the early 1980s.

I have a list back home with some quantities purchased, along with quantities that remained in service in the mid 80s. I won't be able to access any of that info until I get home in January/Feb on leave. The quantities were not large, no more than a few hundred if I recall. The 5 ton trucks (both the diesels and the gas version) remained in Canadian service until replaced by the Steyr 8 tonne (acronym HLVW) around 1993, although some of the wreckers continued to serve until the late 90s. I recall there still being a 5 ton diesel cargo languishing in the 2PPCLI compound during the great flood of 97 in Manitoba.