The average city goer would look at an old truck and think of it as ‘junk’, but Beau Bellekom and his dad from Bellekom Haulage saw a golden opportunity for a restoration.
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It was sun bleached, and rust ridden, with homemade doors, marooned on a strawberry farm in Hope Valley, Western Australia.
But to an 11-year-old Beau and truck loving father, the 1967 International was ripe with potential as well as a survivor of Vietnam wartimes.
“When we found it, it was in pretty bad form,” Beau says.
“It had no tip body or winch and was in desperate need of a paint job and rust repair.”
But where others would have seen a carcass, Beau and his dad saw a challenge.
“My dad taught me all there is to know about restoration when I was around 11,” he says.
“So, we started stripping all the bad parts of the truck off. We found some original doors and a bonnet for the rig and started to pull it all together, then gave it a paint job.
“A couple of years later we found a tip body for it.
Beau says the restoration took five, maybe six years to complete, and patience was quickly needed as part of the process.
And so was paint… a lot of it.
“I painted it around six times because the painters kept getting the colours wrong,” he laughs.
Eventually the right parts came together, a body for the truck was sourced and the original structure slowly reemerged from under years of neglect, held together by elbow grease and long working hours.
And though it’s been ready for a while now, the truck still doesn’t get driven much.
“We never really used it, it mostly sits in the front yard,” Beau says.
“I’ve taken it to a couple of shows and bring it down to grandad’s farm once a year.”
The truck is a reflection of the transport blood that runs deep in the Bellekom family.
Because of his dad, Beau is in the transport industry also, and for work, drives a Kenworth K123.
But here’s the twist to the story… this vintage International is now up for sale.
“I need the money to put into my working truck,” he says.
“I really don’t want to sell it, so if it doesn’t sell, I won’t give it away because it is a great truck overall.”
And a great truck it is. Not only because of its history or the war scars it wears beneath its paint, but also because it reflects time spent with a father and what it takes to navigate historical truck machinery.
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