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Posted

For those not familiar with the name Gar Wood, he was Garfield Wood, an inventor, businessman, boat builder and speedboat racer. He held the world's water speed records from several races. Later in his life, he founded Garwood Industries and built truck bodies for several trucking and truck related industries--especially the garbage truck. No doubt, years ago many of you had seen garbage trucks with the Gar Wood name on them.

He also provided our military with equipment and later manufactured concrete mixers for installation on heavy duty truck chassis. His company was eventually sold to McNeilus Mfg in Dodge Center MN and in-turn McNeilus was sold to Oshkosh Truck Corp about 8 years ago.

Just a bit of OT history.

Frank

Posted

Interesting Frank. I've been through Dodge center and seen the McNeilus operation. As a side note the junkyard there has the market cornered on salvage yard Jeeps. They must have had a deal going and bought up everyone in the state.

Posted

When I was at the '07 WPC national meet in Chicago (Lincolnshire) I was able to go with a bunch of Town & Country folks on a tour of a wood boat restorer up around the Fox Lake area. Many of them had Chrysler flatties in 'em.

Merle

Posted (edited)
Posted
Interesting Frank. I've been through Dodge center and seen the McNeilus operation. As a side note the junkyard there has the market cornered on salvage yard Jeeps. They must have had a deal going and bought up everyone in the state.

Hi Ed,

Years ago, there were several "rumors" making their rounds re McNeilus' reasons for collecting/buying all the jeeps. They wanted the rear ends, transfer cases, transmissions but I never learned exactly why.

Some of the stories ranged from their starting a "leisure/off-road" division to doing rebuilding work for military applications to exporting the jeeps and or drivelines to the Caribbean Islands and elsewhere.

Best regards,

Frank

Posted

Interesting. When we went a few years ago they had a lot still so they must not have exported too many or it was just a certain part of them. We were fixing up an 84 CJ7 at the time and the previous owner had lost a bunch of pieces of the rear brakes.

Posted
Only went 15 knots! Dammit man you were racing along under power!! I cannot envy you more, fishing in San Francisco Bay in a flathead powered boat, luxury!

It was built in 1957, probably 26 feet. NO LUXURY ABOUT IT. Rotten to the core. Name was Mudsucker. I water skiied behind it once but had to take it to 4000 RPM to get me up. Made a lot of strange noises. Reliable as hell. Towed many newer boats back to Oyster Pt. with that.

Posted

I had a friend who restored two old wooden boats one was his mother's St.Lawrence river post office delivery boat a 19 foot Gar Wood sedan utility. The boat had a chrysler marine engine in it very similar ot he one posted. The boat was basically a displacement launch type boar and was designed more for stability tha speed. porbably made 20 knots in prime condition witha light load and a clean bottom.

The other was a 16 foot Criss Craft barrel back racer. This one would make maybe 30 knots with a Gray Marine 6 which I think was a marine conversion of the Hercules L head 6.

This is similar to his barrel back

Alt_Chris%20Craft%20Barrel%20Back%20-%20print.jpg

And the Gar Wood looked like this (as a mattter of fact this pic was taken on the St Lawrence in the vacinity of where the boat was used as a postal delivery vessel)

GW%20Sedan%20001.jpg

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