It was one decision away from being melted down and forgotten forever. Parts for a 1927 54C International Harvestor truck sat in a museum scrap pile, waiting to meet its end as it headed toward the blast furnace.
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Gregory O’Meley now owns this small piece of history which he says is an absolute rarity.
“There’s only two in Australia that we know of, and there’s only about 12 left around the world,” he says.
“There was only 1300 produced. From what I can gather, International Harvester would have kept about 20 per cent of the production and then shipped the rest around the world.
“We may have only gotten 10 per cent of the production, so it’s pretty special.”
After Gregory saw a picture of a 74C Super Duty International Harvester truck in 1997, he began his quest to own an International chain drive.
“All before my exposure to the “internet” or Facebook etc, I went to swap meets and networked with likeminded enthusiasts, hand wrote letters to hundreds of vintage car, truck, steam and machinery clubs hoping someone would have seen or heard of one,” he says.
“I would follow up any leads with more letters or phone calls in which would lead to more contacts.
“In the first few years of my search the reality of finding a chain drive Inter became rather dim, so as a consolation I started to collect some remains of the Heavy Duty Class 3 series trucks of the mid-twenties, the 33, 43 and 63, but none of the 103s.
“Some of the remains were in such poor condition most people would have scrapped them, if it were not for me showing any interest.
“I did save any usable parts for future use or to share with others for their own restoration projects, I have even posted parts back to America.”
Time passed, life rolled on and 18 years went by of searching with still no luck in finding a chain drive Inter truck or even another brand for sale.
But his luck changed in 2016 when a grainy Gumtree listing appeared.
“One of these adverts contained an unrecognisable blob of rusted steel which intrigued me to click on the ad, and there it was,” he says.
“The sad looking remains of a 1927 54C International with a 1927.43 on top, located in the Herberton Heritage Museum near Atherton in far north Queensland.”
The advert read, ‘Free to Good Home’, so he contacted the curator Darryl and explained his quest.
“Darryl explained he had rejected others who wanted to cherry pick parts of them,” he says.
“The terms were to take the lot or take nothing at all, which was not going to be a problem for me.”
Gregory took a look at the truck, shook hands and organised transport to take it home.
The truck itself carries clues from a working life that’s mostly undocumented.
Gregory says the dimples in the front cross member are called polling pockets, where timber poles were placed to shunt railway wagons as a quicker way of sorting carriages without a locomotive.
Somewhere along the line, the chassis was stretched and double skinned for strength, and a second gearbox was added to crawl through steep terrain.
“The 54C had its original solid rubber tyre wheels converted to pneumatics,” Gregory says.
“Now that I had secured the 54C I needed the solid tyre wheels from Victoria I had seen many years ago.
“Sixteen years had passed, I rang the owner and asked had it been scrapped? He said no. Due to its difficult resting place and the distance away from the scrappy. It wasn’t financially viable.
“Being so close to Bass Strait it was in extremely poor condition but still had a lot of parts to save.
After dissecting it and taking one ton of steel to the tip, I loaded up the goodies and headed home.”
Gregory says the rig used to work around tin mines.
“It would have been very hilly, but I can only assume that it was doing some pretty heavy hauling in the country, hence the second gearbox so they could gear it down,” he says.
Restoration has never been the goal for Gregory, in fact, he believes restoring it would strip away the very thing that makes it special.
“It’s too far gone to be restored,” he says. “And I think if I tried to, it wouldn’t look right. I think it’s better off being the historic piece that it is.”
But he did his part in making the truck more complete.
“I thought I had overcome the biggest hurdle of finding the chain drive and then getting it home,” he says. “But complacency and procrastination crept in.”
He had come too far, he had to keep going. So, finding a medium sized radiator was now at the top of his list.
The front axle and wheels were found in a scrap pile bound for the furnace and he found a radiator off Facebook.
“Due to all the leaf springs being oxy cut out of the 54C – why? We will never know – I had to borrow a set of front springs out of its baby brother, a model 43, which was absolutely identical,” Gregory says.
“The rear replacements were found hiding underneath a 1971 C1500 International, which was a 95 per cent match, apart from the top leaf being a bit longer eye to eye.
“With the front springs and axle being removed prior to arriving at the museum, the engine sump sat on the ground for years causing it to rust out, allowing condensation to form inside which has destroyed the engine of the 54C.”
An engine from a 63 is serviceable and will be transplanted into the 54C in the next two years for its centenary fire-up in 2027.
By next August however, Gregory aims to have this truck driveable for Dubbo.
“The truck is not restored, just operational,” he says. “Right now, I’ve got other fish to fry.”
With over 20 trucks at home and other projects to complete, Gregory’s a busy man.
“I’m under the pump to get a couple of motorbikes ready,” he says.
“I’m taking them over to South Australia to Salt Lake Racing.
“I’m not getting any younger and I want to knock a couple of things off my bucket list.”
The truck has already made some appearances. The old, rusty banger sat at Bathurst lined up next to polished, gleaming show trucks.
People stopped, stared and took pics, and Gregory couldn’t have been happier.
And this is why he does what he does.
Gregory isn’t in transport by trade, he’s just an International enthusiast.
“I looked at some other trucks of the 1920s but they had timber spoke wheels, and they’re very expensive to rebuild,” he says.
“My one has cast iron wheels which are pretty impervious to the weathering and the age of them.
“This hobby is just something totally unique, so I went on that search for a chain drive, and it took me 18 years to find what I was looking for.”
It survived the mines, the hills, the scrap pile, and nearly a century of neglect. And Gregory O’Meley waited 18 years to prove he was exactly the person, fit for the job.
To contact Gregory about the truck, email him on rustisacolour@bigpond.com
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