1985 Ford F-250

If one pulls into Uncle Tony's U-Pull It of Fort Pierce, FL from the north, coming from I-95, you'll likely be routed down Indrio Rd. Indrio is a road that feels particularly emblematic of Florida's current situation. Cruising down the road, you're surrounded by flat farm fields, speckled with groups of trees and rusty roofed tin sheds. However, the road itself seems to exist incongruous to this- the road is a roomy 4 lanes, flanked by sidewalks that seem to go nowhere before dead ending shortly before I-95. It's infrastructre pre-built; the road had been 2 lanes with not a sidewalk in sight before a road widening project was completed in 2017. While the development hasn't really begun in earnest, it's clear the area is prepped for it, farms poised to make way for new cookie cutter subdivisions. (Cue "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds)



This truck, a 1985 Ford F250, was a thing rarely spotted today- an actual work truck. Now, based on it's stunning paint job it's one that's been parked underneath some trees for a good bit of time, so it's not a crazy long lived farm truck or anything, but it still probably hauled ten times as much as 95% of trucks sold today ever will.



While it's engine has long flown the coop, some interior details will tell us later that this truck had a 420 cubic inch International-Harvester IDI diesel engine, put in varying members of the Ford F-Series beginning in 1983. International-Harvester, by that point having taken both the last Scouts and D-Series behind the woodshed, made a final effort to keep at least a little bit of their hand in the pickup market, reaching an agreement with Ford in 1981 to supply diesel engines for their F-Series trucks and Econoline vans. The idea was to produce light weight, drop in replacements that could easily and cheaply slot into the same engine bay as a Ford V8 and be used to market the wonderful world of diesel to new customers without much fuss. And it seems to have worked, with International-Harvester engines staying in place all the way until 1994, when they were finally bumped off for the first iteration of the Ford Power Stroke (which was still a Navistar engine).




Popping open the doors to get a look at the interior, we see a classic truck interior, a red dash dropped in front of a solitary bench seat. Staring at this photo, I'm still not fully sure whether this seat is just covered in, or somehow entirely stuffed with, sawdust and/or hay. Now I know this isn't the 1930s, I'm pretty sure Ford didn't ship the 1985 model year with sawdust stuffing. But at the same time it's a pretty consistent layer- either way, it shows the seats were worn down within an inch of their lives, either way. Our footwell's full of junk, and the driver's seat is littered with chunks of dash. Standard condition for a junkyard resident when the seats aren't 'desirable', and probably also a not uncommon situation for a beleaugered farm truck as it entered the "electrical gremlins" stage of automotive old age.



Swapping sides to the drivers seat we get a look at the odometer, sadly still a 5 digit model- so while we do have a reading, I'd bet money that 88,000 and change probably needs a 2 in front of it. Our speedometer is also still outfitted with an 85 mph max speed (which was probably a bit generous for this) and a highlighted 55 mph, a long lived gas crisis spectre.