Two or three weekends ago I went to an auction of municipal equipment. The standard fair was there in regards to snow plows, pickups and heavy equipment. Most items were well used and over ten years of age. Walking the line I noticed a nice looking late model Ford F-450 with a plow and dump body. It looked great. The paint was still bright red with gold pin striping and the interior was fairly clean. The milage on the odometer read around 65,000. At first glance it would seem this truck had plenty of life let. Looking at the vehicle maintenance history it became clear that this Ford had spent its fair share of time in the shop with rough idling, leaking trans, busted radiators and corroded brake systems. I started to wonder if maybe the F-450 was the wrong platform for heavy duty plowing. Maybe a platform based off a medium duty truck would be better. Enter the International TerraStar.
As you can see this one is setup for a wing. Now the question is this; is it better than a Ford F-450 in terms of durability? Well, who knows. I really only wanted an excuse to share these photos and maybe start a discussion.
International does claim that the TerraStar has the strongest frame rails, toughest engine, sturdiest transmission and meanest transfer case in the class. So what do you think?
Sorry, no pictures of the Ford.
That looks like a nice set up, I’ve seen a bunch of towns here in Maine that run wings on F-550’s, which are a nice truck, had a few at a place a worked but there really just overgrown 1 ton’s. They had a Terrastar 4X4 C&C at the Fryeburg Fair this fall I gave a real good once over, everything on that truck was massive, the front drive axle makes an F-550’s look like a tooth pick:-), hell, at least the one I looked at had double frame from under the cab some where to the front spring hanger’s on the rear axle. If I had the money & need(well probably just the money and I’ll find a need;-) I’d buy one in a heartbeat over any other 19,500GVW truck