Re: what's a "candy wagon?" ntxt


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Posted by Merrill Fish on April 15, 2000 at 01:43:17:

In Reply to: what's a "candy wagon?" ntxt posted by m clark on April 14, 2000 at 10:16:57:

Mark,
The yellow W-500 that you had shown a picture of as being for sale a while back was a former line construction materials and support truck used by heavy transmission and distribution power line construction crews at Southern California Edison Company. The trucks were used from the early '60s through the '80s. They were the same basic truck as your picture showed, with the following added equipment on them: there was a rack on the drivers side for holding large coils of wire, rope, or just about anything you might want to hang up, that ran the length of the bed to a point about two feet from the end, where there was a place for a 10 or 20 gallon drinking water container. In the center of the bed at the front was a large, gasoline engine powered air compressor, and some of the later trucks had a gasoline engine powered generator on top of the compressor. On the passenger side, there was an electric powered crane, rated at about two or three thousand pounds, with a manually extendable boom; with the boom collapsed, it was about 12 feet long, and could be extended to about 18 feet. Mounted on the bed behind the crane, was a metal bin divided into square sections about 8 inches to a side, for holding hardware such as bolts, washers, etc. The bin stopped about a foot short of the end of the bed, and that area was used for a work bench of sorts. The bed area between the rack on the drivers side and the bin on the passenger side was used to haul such stuff as crossarms, cases of insulators, extra wire, and some trucks had frames built into them for mounting fairly large reels of conductor, or underground cable. Beneath the bed at the sides, were under bed tool boxes, storage bins for long, flat items such as crossarm braces or poletop extensions, shovels, and other miscellaneous stuff. At the rear below the bed, there were more bins for flat materials up to about three feet in length, and there were two cabinets with pull out drawers for carrying nuts, washers, short bolts, and such. There was a swing away, spring loaded step, and a pintle hitch, Connections for vacuum brakes, electric brakes, and air brakes on a few of them. At the front of the truck was the winch, with extended shafts for running a capstan, or other power equipment, from either side of the truck. All of the trucks had additional racks for carrying ladders. We would load them up with as much stuff as we could shove into them, hook a trailer with ten or fifteen poles on behind, and go build some power lines. Since they carried all fo th "candy" that we used to do our job, we called them "Candy Wagons". Oh, yeah; they had several spot lights and/or flood lights mounted in various places, too. One of the best trucks I ever had the pleasure of using. We used them in conjunction with heavy line trucks most of the time, although one time, a couple of other guys and I did set several 30 foot service poles with one. If you wonder how I know the truck you had a picture of was a former Edison truck, it was the grey spot on the door where the decals had been removed that tipped me off.

M


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