Murray Langford - The Man & His Machines

In-depth

21 Aug

There are trucks, then there are TRUCKS, and then there are Murray Langford’s TRUCKS! To this casual observer, Murray’s collection is at the pinnacle of classic truck restoration.

Originally from the Adelaide Hills but moving to Mount Gambier when he was about six years old, Murray’s family on both sides were farmers. Intending to follow in their footsteps, they got out of the industry before he could enter it so he went Jackaroo-ing for a number of years. Finally it dawned that there was no money in that field so Murray looked for other opportunities.

“It just happened that agricultural and forestry spraying was just starting off in 1967 and I grabbed the opportunity to get into that on the ground floor. That meant tractors, four-wheel and six-wheel drives, self-propelled - whatever you can spray with is what we had. We kept expanding and had skidders and other equipment converted for spraying.

“It fitted in well with my agricultural background. I wanted to stay in the paddock and that was my way of doing it. Then I wrecked my back at 35 so I moved into the office and employed people, eventually having a staff of around thirty.

“At age 58 I decided to ‘retire’ and we had a huge clearing sale. I kept a lot of my machinery though and I had one man who had been with me for years and was really good on bodywork and painting (we did all our own workshop work as well), so I asked him to stay. I had a couple of trucks put aside and we decided to restore an International K B5. This was back in 1992.”

**Hupmobile Hot Rod. Not really Murray’s cup of tea but I’ll have it!**

“I had my first old car back in 1975 - a Hupmobile Straight Eight. I restored that at home as well as I could with the finances I had at the time, which wasn’t a lot because we were pouring it all into the business. I kept expanding in that car restoration field and had six Hupmobile cars – a rare breed.

“I started to lose interest in the car scene and had a couple of old trucks here, ready to do. Kay, my wife was keen on it too. My interest was always there with trucks anyway, so when I retired we decided to go into restoring a few more. We restored what I wanted to do and then somebody would come along and say, ‘Hey can you do mine to that standard?’ I would do the mechanicals and my man would do the bodywork and painting.”

**International KB 5. Where it all began**

With this, Murray takes me into his ‘shed’ where, in a neat line, are seven of the most beautiful trucks you could ever lay eyes upon. He has restored around 15 trucks, keeping seven for his private collection. After the KB5 came a White Mustang. The White looks as though it was painted just last week. “It’s done some hard work. It was our camping truck.”

The restoration technique has changed over the years. With the earlier models such as the KB5, where it was rusty, it was all sandblasted and you can see the pitting where the rust was. “The rust will never come back but you can see the history of it. In the ‘80s and ‘90s that is how we left them.”

We move on to a 1959 WC22 model Mustang. This one was bought into Australia by Utah Construction and it worked initially down at the Altona refinery. This was the very last of this WC model. It then had several owners, finishing up down at Portland, working on the breakwater with a tipper on. It then went to a spud farm. Because it was very, very slow it could run alongside the spud harvester.

This truck is where Murray’s restoration methods started to change. The bodywork is still sandblasted, then polyurethane and then a very minimum of filler and then straight over with a polyurethane topcoat. This gives the truck a super smooth finish with no signs of pitting. “You can bash it with a hammer and you can’t make it crack.”

Next to the Mustang is an immaculate 1950 FG Foden. “From then on we changed to what we thought restorations would look like in 10 years’ time, and sure enough they do. We were trying to future proof. We were ahead of the game in that regard.”

The Foden has a Gardner six cylinder motor paired with a four-speed gearbox with super-low in first and reverse only. There’s no power divide - typically English. The differential - designed by David Brown of Aston Martin fame – is almost the same as underneath the Murray’s much earlier 1924 GMC.

We move on to the 1924, model 71 GMC. “A good mate in Ballarat had this stored along with some other very old trucks. We brought it home and did a full restoration on it. Parts we found mainly from the US and we did a lot of casting of other bits and pieces. There was something there of almost every bit we were short of.”

“The motor was done up by a friend of mine in Port Pirie. It’s a beautiful old 6 ½ L four-cylinder motor. We’ve done 200 km in the last four years driving it and we enjoy it immensely. It’s an eight speed and really fun to drive – except when backing it.”

Bernie Learson was at Murray’s a couple of years back and Murray asked him to back the GMC in. Bernie is an old hand when it comes to trucking but it took him 11 tries to get it in. He’s never lived it down.”

“It has five gears below 5 miles an hour so it will tell you where it was worked. It’s only just quicker than a team of horses. It’s a real ditch crawler. In its day this was the equivalent of the 900 Kenworth. There was nothing this big. This is the Legend of its era.”

Then we came to this writer’s personal favourite - the 1958 Diamond T 950. “It had what I wanted including the supercharged 300 Cummins. Three hundred horses in 1958! This was a beast of its era. It was the biggest thing Cummins made at that time. The following year they moved into Turbo’s and got 330 hp out of the same motor.”

“The blokes up in the north-west timber country were bigger, so they altered the cab to suit them. They dropped the floor down 4 inches and they pushed the back of the cab out 3 inches. The dash is exactly how it was, as is all of the cabin except the steering which we changed to right hand drive, going to hydraulic. I could hardly steer the thing in reverse, it was that heavy”

At the back of the shed is a Commer that my wife takes an immediate liking to.

“I’m constantly amazed,” says Murray. “It is an absolute chick-magnet.”

Not present this day was Murray’s 1969 W924 Kenworth six-rod. “It went down to CMV in Adelaide for their 50th celebration of sales of Kenworth. It went there for a little holiday and hasn’t reported back yet. This was last April!

“I said to Johnno at CMV, the weather is improved now, I could probably use it. He answered that it had improved in Adelaide as well. Ah well, they are looking after it I suppose.”

“I said I would never restore a Kenworth; there are too many of them around. I was at a truck show at Los Angeles and I heard this 12 V 71 Detroit start up. I found my way down to where the guy was and in talking to him discovered there was one in Adelaide.”

“So I went back to the motel that night and I rang up a mate, Brian, who said he’d been going past it every day for nine years and it was just deteriorating. It had disappeared about three months ago. He said he would find it and he did, near Murray Bridge.”

**12 cylinders and 18 litres of GM’s best**

“Soon as I got back to Australia I rushed down there with the cash and bought it. And it was a good thing to do. It’s the only original V12 that was in the truck from new, left in the country. There are only two in Australia. We’ve had a lot of fun with it.”

In another shed are a whole pile of trucks in various states, and mostly in dire need of repair. There’s a 1917 Diamond T oil tanker, a cab-over 404 Diamond T, a couple of Federals, a circa 1949 GMC cab-over, and on it goes. Some are Murray’s and some are for clients. He is certainly in no shortage of work.

There’s a sign Murray had, which read: He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins. At a young 75, we hope Murray Langford hangs around for a long time to come. Firstly he needs to make sure he does have the most toys and secondly, we all need to see the masterpieces in his possession at the truck shows he attends. It is worth travelling from the other end of the country, believe me.