Preserving a bit of family farm history

Drew Hanson had no illusions about building a show vehicle out of the old 1958 International Harvester four-wheel drive he dragged out of a field on the family farm in north-central Kansas back in December 2000.

“It’s basically a tractor with a cab on it,” he observed. “But all of my siblings and I learned to drive in it. It’s just like my dad, nothing fancy, just hard-working and dependable.”

His father, Dean Hanson, 89, had bought the truck in 1963, to use on Cottage Grove Farms, founded in 1909 by his grandfather.

“He bought it from a fella in Concordia. It was a ‘town truck,’ but it was geared way too low. It drove like a tractor, so he put it up for sale and Dad jumped on it,” Hanson said.

Although it was a low-mileage find and the 4.09 gears in the differentials were well-suited to farm duty and hauling sacks of seed corn, fertilizer and soybeans in Dean Hanson’s seed business, there was one thing that had to change almost immediately. It was the color of the pickup: “Timber Tan,” according to the build sheet found inside the cab of the old Binder.

It was quickly repainted a generic refrigerator white and put to work.

“From then on, it was just ‘the white truck … go get the white truck,’ Drew Hanson recalled. “The folks just didn’t worry about sending us out in it. It wasn’t fast enough to get us into trouble and it was so dependable, they knew it would get us home.”

The truck often had a water tank in back, to haul water to cattle in pastures, or a propane tank, to fuel an irrigation pump.

“I remember the youngest one of us steering it while the rest of us kids picked up corn that the combine had missed and threw it in the back of the truck … and scooping grain out of it into feed bunks,” Hanson said.

It did yeoman’s duty, day in, day out.

“That pickup got me beat up at school,” Hanson chuckled. “Dad was a big believer in education and when it snowed and they weren’t able to run the buses, the school superintendent would call and say, ‘Dean, will you be bringing the boys in to school?’”

If his father could manage to get them to school, it meant that the city kids had to come to class that day.

“That didn’t fare well for me,” Hanson explained.

But eventually, the day came when the truck was parked and nobody ever came back out to start it up. When Hanson retrieved it in 2000, it still had a 1976 license plate on it. It sat in his driveway in southwest Wichita for several years while he saved money to have the pickup recommissioned.

He was afraid the inline 6-cylinder engine would be locked up from a quarter century of neglect. But when the RK Restoration shop rigged up a gallon fuel can and put a fresh battery in the truck, it fired right up and ran. All that was necessary was honing one cylinder that had been scored.

The only modifications Hanson had done involved installing a Pertronix electronic ignition and an alternator designed to look like the original generator. He also opted for a set of 16-inch Michelin radials installed on the split-rim wheels, which provided a bit softer suspension feel.

Morgan-Bulleigh was called on to replicate the original black leatherette seat cover and install new headliner and sun visor coverings.

Given the choice between a $600-a-gallon paint job and a $17-a-gallon paint job, he chose the lower-priced alternative.

“This really wasn’t a ‘restoration,’ this was just to preserve the old truck,” Hanson said. Even so, finding parts wasn’t easy, or cheap, and the tab kept rolling up. His wife had trouble understanding spending so much money on an old farm truck, he said.

Although he found a lot of old Binder parts in Washington state, one thing he couldn’t locate was a good gas tank. There was so much rust in the tank that whenever he drove it somewhere, his wife, Brenda, had to follow to make sure he made it back home. He often had to jump out and blow into the fuel filler neck to dislodge chunks of rust from the fuel line.

So he solved the problem in typical farmer style, installing a plastic outboard motorboat fuel tank in the bed of the truck.

When the truck was finally finished, it made its grand debut at a family reunion in July 2004. His sister and brothers couldn’t wait to climb inside the International and take a turn at the wheel.

“It’s the nostalgia. That’s the thing that my wife finally got. That’s what this is all about, what it meant to all of them growing up on the farm,” Hanson said.

“Now I can’t go into a gas station without having five guys come up and start telling stories about driving old Binders back on the farm,” he said.

This story was originally published February 27, 2015 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Preserving a bit of family farm history."