Ideal Island Transportation – Our 1979 F250 Pickup Truck

Over twenty years ago, we purchased this 1979 F250 built up pickup truck from our oldest son. He had purchased this pick-up truck from a farmer to have a transportation that he really liked while he was attending university and working part time. When he graduated as an environmental engineer, he needed more suitable transportation for his daily commute. My husband Larry and I decided when he was going to put this classic piece of Detroit iron up for sale, that we should buy it. We considered that it would be the ideal fun vehicle to have up at our northern Ontario camp on Manitoulin Island.  This truck would be the ideal transportation for us to leave at the local airport so that when we landed there with our Piper PA32 aircraft, we would have transportation to drive the approximate sixteen miles to our summer camp. Was that ever a great decision!

In 2003, I drove this truck about five hours north from our home in southern Ontario, took the truck onto the Chi-Cheeman ferry for the two-hour ride over to Manitoulin Island, and then drove another hour to get to the airport to pick up my husband at the airport where he had landed our Piper Cherokee 6 airplane. I will never forget all the appreciative gestures and admiring glances that this truck received on that trip. We then drove our truck from the airport to our camp. When we decided it was time to get back to our home because our aviation welding business needed our attention, we locked up camp and drove this truck to the airport and got in our airplane for the hour and a half flight back home.  We always use windshield and window sun shades when our truck sits outside in the spring, summer, and fall to help protect the cab from sun and heat damage. In winter, we park the truck off airport in a secure, unheated, storage facility and disconnect the battery. We use the airport courtesy vehicle on the last trip in the fall and the first trip up in the spring to retrieve our 1979 truck.

With the pick up in storage for the winter when roads to our camp are not maintained, and snow makes them impassable, we are so glad to have this great truck with a carburetor, which means it can always be coaxed into starting relatively easily.  Larry and I always think that we would have gone through several newer vehicles in this same time period if we didn’t have this truck. Newer, more electronic vehicles would not tolerate the very cold temperatures and months of storage nearly so well. We both think this classic truck is so fun to drive when we need to go to a store or event. Our friends and acquaintances all instantly recognize us and wave. A trip to a gas station or variety store almost always results in strangers coming over and after they tell us how much they love our truck, will continue to tell us about their father, uncle or some other family member or friend having one similar and share great memories. Modern vehicles simply don’t elicit those same fun conversations.

Over the years, we have had much enjoyment in keeping this truck in great shape. LMC Truck has been a big part of that. Just once, our daughter and I drove this truck onto the ferry again and drove it on the long trip to get it home. This was late in the fall of 2010, so that Larry and our second son, who is a mechanical engineer, could do preventative maintenance and some upgrades over the winter, on the truck that we loved. Among other things, they installed: a factory rebuilt engine, a manifold with four barrel Holly carburetor, a custom exhaust system to match, a rebuilt radiator, replaced one fuel tank and two new fuel sending units, replaced the oil pan with a new extra capacity oil pan, rebuilt transmission, electronic distributor and ignition system, and had Rhino bed liner applied. We would not have been able to do this work without the great service from LMC Truck.  It was fun for me to drive this truck back up to the Island, across on the two-hour ferry ride and drive to the airport again to pick up my husband who had flown our airplane up. Our truck has stayed on the island since.

With the truck being in great mechanical shape, in the winter of 2020/2021, we left the truck in the hands of Keith Jewell and the local autobody shop, Jewell’s Collision in Gore Bay, on Manitoulin Island to strip the truck down, do autobody work and paint our truck to match its original colors as it had always been, as well as installing lots of parts that we had delivered to them from LMC Truck. This included new front and rear bumpers, new sliding back window for the cab, new mirrors and brackets, new window gaskets and door seals, and some new lights and lenses. A local Manitoulin Island car dealership helped us rebuild a brake booster, and they installed four new tires, along with new front wheel bearings and hubs.

For over twenty years now, this 1979 F250 truck has been considered a family treasure that helps us fly to our island airport and then drive to our camp in comfortable fun style, our own way.  Our grandkids call this our “Monster Truck.” This vintage vehicle sits proudly at the airport on Manitoulin Island waiting for us to fly back the next weekend to once again take us to camp. LMC Truck has helped us to restore, maintain and customize our truck, so that hopefully it will be a family gem for generations to come.

We love our truck!

Larry & Norma Armes