original cost of a CCKW

[Flx49]

Hello to all members! I am a 72 year old guy who has always had a great interest in military vehicles. I grew up during WWll, and followed the progress of the war. I will never forget the first time I heard that beautiful sound of a CCKW as it drove off. My question is, what was the original cost of a CCKW that the Gov't paid GM. I think I read someplace that the Studebaker US6 cost about $200.00 more than a CCKW, and since the longevity of a truck in war was approximately 180 miles, the Gov't didn't want to spend the extra money. Hence the Studebakers were sent to the Allies, and used on the Alcan highway. Any comments? Bob Malley

[Matt]

Hi Bob,

Welcome to the forum!. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your question,but I would be interested to know as well.

All the best,

Matt.

[dr deuce]

Studebaker did not have the production facilities to make enough trucks to meet the demands for the military (Army) and GM was rather obstinate in not wanting to make someone elses truck.

(I wrote an article called Chrysler and the Tank for MV mag early on) and from my research I described how Chrysler was told to double and double again the production of M3's and M4 tanks and oh by the way you cannot have any more machine tools (lathes etc) and oh by the way the 9 cyl radial aircraft engines you have been using will not be available any more. Thta is one of the reasons for the "Dionne Quintetts" 30 cyl (6 cyl) Dodge engine and all the other engines they tried: Twin Detroit Diesels, Guberson radial diesels, Cat radial diesels, and finally the Ford developed GAA and GAN V8 engines.

GM had the machine tools and the production facilities to produce whatever the government needed. If you look at a Chevrolet car (or truck) at that time, the only substantial aluminum parts were the 6 pistons in the engine. Chevrolet however became the 2nd largest producer of aluminum forgings in the world in WW2 behind Alcoa making radial engine hubs, propeller blades etc.

The government wanted someone they could give the order to and not have to worry about them coming back to them crying that they needed more machine tools or another co-producer like Ford for the Jeep. If you look at the output of GM in WW2, it was absolutely staggering compared to anyone else. Chevrolet producer almost as many 1.5 tonners alone as Reo and Studebaker did deuces.

If you want to do something interesting sometime, look in eBay at the wartime ads for the different companies and what they made. Quite interesting....