Don’t Try This at Home: A 1973 Chevy Truck Commercial

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Here’s one of the great TV commercial stunts of all time: a Chevy pickup pulling seven trailers loaded with 178 tons of logs. Watch this.

 

Not that we believe you’d actually do it, but we feel obligated to say: Don’t try this at home. In this memorable 1973 commercial, a 3/4 ton Chevrolet Cheyenne pickup pulls seven large trailers loaded with 178 tons of freshly cut logs. No,.we advise sticking with the manufacturer’s recommended limits for hauling and towing, or you can do some real damage. If you look closely in this spot, you can see that the pickup’s bed and cab are visibly bent out of shape by the extreme load.

This commercial was part of an entire television campaign of the early ’70s in which Chevy pickups pulled outlandish loads, including a large boat and a Boeing 747 airliner. The logging stunt wasn’t completely original, however. Floyd Veach, a trucker in Thompson Falls, Montana, had made the news wires pulling massive log trains, reportedly setting a world record, although he used a Peterbilt semi tractor. The Chevy ad people hired Veach as driver and consultant for the TV shoot, which was a big enough event that the local paper, the Sanders County Register, came out to cover it. And now, thanks to  the internet, the feat is captured for prosperity. Watch this.

 

6 thoughts on “Don’t Try This at Home: A 1973 Chevy Truck Commercial”

  1. With 4wd low engaged and fairly low axle ratios, there’s some pretty good torque multiplication, so you can pull pretty big loads on level ground, as long as the tires will roll freely. You just can’t go very fast. lol
    The biggest thing is getting it moving from a stop, and getting it stopped once it’s moving…

  2. Look at the first picture in this article. The white paint on the cab and the bed don’t line up. The frame of the truck is already bent. This was a very common problem on the C/K trucks (1973-1987).

    • Had several Chevy Silverado’s from that era on the farm, hauled a lot of stuff and never had a problem. Haters are gona hate!

  3. The commercial has no local sound of the event. Betcha that engine and transmission were screaming.

    Wonder if after the ad was shot they drove (or towed) the pickup to the scrapyard, or to the closest dealership.

  4. I towed a 12×48 mobile home 40+ miles with a 1976 3/4 ton chevy Scottsdale. No problem…

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