Posted by Paul Cook on Monday, April 05, 2004 at 12:27PM :
In Reply to: Anyone else notice this? posted by Jonas on Sunday, April 04, 2004 at 8:53PM :
I worked in the cab scheduling department of the IHC medium and small truck (pickup)manufacturing plant. Newly painted cabs were carried on trolleys that ran on overhead tracks. They were painted in the production sequence, but were taken out of sequence for two-tone paint or for paint repair.
Scheduling involved "switching" the cabs onto a series of overhead tracks so that the next cab in the manufacturing sequence was available at the end of the overhead conveyor system for dropping onto the main assembly line. It was much like an overhead rail switchyard.
The overhead trolley supported the cab with a large pad on the underside of the cab roof. That's why that area was not painted.
The bottoms of the cabs and some other areas that did not have the finish color were painted with "junk" paint. The cab production line worked two shifts while the main assembly line worked three shifts. "Junk" paint was a mix of all paint that was dumped from the bulk spray gun tanks at the end of the second shift. IHC produced school buses and fleet trucks for highway departments. As a result, their "junk" paint tended to be varying shades of yellow or orange. After a run of blue cabs, the "junk" paint became green. Red production runs gave deep orange. By the way, all red cabs were run together because red had a strong tendency to show up as overspray.
Since this was in the mid-fifties, I would guess that all other manufacturers practiced the same economies and used "junk" paint on many areas that were not finished in the final vehicle color.
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