Sleeping Dog #14731

The Story

Stretching pretty far back in automotive time, a 1938 International Harvester heavy-duty truck with dual wheels rusts away in the bright sun covering an old school junkyard. At over eighty years old, the word relic really applies here. And for that matter, so does rustbucket!

But a big part of the rusty beauty in junkyards is the way old faded paint can remain mixed with the rust as shown here. Thin, faint, and plainly worn out…that’s when whatever paint remains looks great with deep rust! All the patina in an old-school junkyard is always rare…only time, sun, and weather can make it what it is. You could even say it’s naturally created beauty because of that method.

There is also some worn beauty in the glass of these old vehicles too. On this truck, the windshield has started to delaminate which gives the ghostly white streaking around the edges. It can be interesting at times. I’m not certain, but this windshield may be one that can open on a hinge at the top to let air into the cab.

An old Chrysler car is half piggybacked onto the frame of this old truck. It’s certainly as much a woebegone relic as the truck and fairly close in age to all the other surrounding vehicles in this cluster.

So after hanging out for almost a century, what was the original color of this old 1938 International truck? You could say yellow and might be right. International harvester had a cream color close to this in 1938, but this old truck may have been repainted a few times over the years. It seems there may have been a coat of green on there at one time. Sometimes the paint shades can shift too, which only adds more interest.

If you like vehicular junk with character, you can see my entire collection of vintage pickup trucks in the weeds in the Junkyard Pickup Trucks gallery. If you have more interest in faded paint,  check out the three different layers of paint on the old Mack truck in Thermodyne Fade #14467 that give it a tropical appearance!

Location: an old-school junkyard in rural Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Picture and story © Andrew Dierks