CHEVY TRUCK ID: 1934-1972

Truck Enthusiasts and Their Keen Eyes

Most of our truck-building buddies can date and identify any truck you can come up with from any distance, even from deep in a grove of trees and clear across a fairground show-’n’-shine. That’s what truck guys do: They enjoy identifying a rusted old fender at a swap meet. At the other end of the spectrum are non-truck guys who think that C10 or F-100 are row numbers at the local stadium parking lot.

Understanding the Basics of Truck Identification

We figured that our average reader may fall somewhere in between these two and would enjoy an easy lesson on how to distinguish one truck from another, especially when there are those trucks that are nearly identical from year to year except for a few minor changes. Also, this pictorial provides us another way of getting more of our readers’ trucks into the magazine. We’re starting with the early Chevys, 1936 to 1972, because there are so many to show and they have similarities. Plus, we had to cut it off somewhere. In upcoming issues, we’ll show you the rest of the Chevy years, as well as the Fords and Dodges, and a grab bag of all the others.

Keeping This Article for Future Reference

You may want to keep this article for future reference, not only for yourself but to show other people as well; everybody will wonder how you know so much. It will also come in handy when someone tries to describe an old truck they saw for sale somewhere—the one that gets away or otherwise turns out to be something like a ’78 Datsun longbed.

A Nod to GMCs and Final Thoughts

We’ve also included several GMCs, which usually differ only in the grille and emblems. After reading this, you’ll wind up being as dialed in as the guy standing next to you at that next event. You’ll avoid the embarrassment of calling a ’64 a ’65 and having to say something like, “Oh, well, this must be Canadian.”