Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 05/98) - What is believed to be Yellowknife's first delivery truck is on the road again -- at least temporarily.

Grimshaw Trucking out at Kam Lake is hauling an old Mercury M-68 pickup to head office in Edmonton.

The idea is to restore the old workhorse for the company's 50th anniversary of business in Yellowknife.

"Up until two weeks ago, it was at Garth Eggenberger's Age Automotives," Grimshaw area service manager John Johansen said.

"He donated it back to us. We don't know how many years it was there."

Johansen said he spotted the truck over at Age about six years ago but there was no way to get to it because cars were stacked all around it. The old cars were recently moved, opening up access to the Grimshaw truck.

"I'm guessing it could be from the early 1950s."

The truck's serial number (PF81N48-35509) hints it may be a 1948 model. But regardless of its year, Grimshaw office clerk Dale Crocker thinks it's "funky."

"It runs," she added.

Inside the cab, pieces of plastic vapor barriers still adhere to the rock-smashed windows. It appears the truck did not have a window defroster.

To keep warm, occupants could fiddle with one of three tiny doors on a passenger-side heater. When the truck was new the heater likely shone but time has rusted this and much more of the truck's metal away.

Behind the seat sits an ominous fuel tank.

Powered by a flathead V-8 engine, it has about 83,000 original miles (130,000 kilometres) on it.

The battery -- not the original one -- came with a 24-month warranty. That's long since expired.

The passenger-side door still has much of the old Grimshaw Trucking and Distributing Hamilton Brothers lettering.

Not so for the driver's side door, marred by graffiti. When anything sits idle for so many years, these types of scratches are inevitable.

The truck would have originally taken freight from barges at the Old Town government dock to Yellowknife businesses and the mines. Maybe it hauled food to the Wildcat Cafe.

The truck itself would have been barged up to Yellowknife from Hay River. Back then, that's where the road ended.

Wednesday, a Grimshaw truck helped the old Merc make what could be its first trip down the Mackenzie Highway.