[Milsurplus] "Military Trader & Military Vehicles"

[Hue Miller]

This is exerpted from an email i received from these magazines,
for your infotainment:
(via: Hue Miller)

"Greetings,

 "Jeep in the crate." In our hobby, that one phrase causes more eyes to roll than Kelly's
Heroes' Oddball declaring, "Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the
negative waves." Not being one to stir the negative waves, let me simply state, if WWII
jeeps are still in the crate, they are sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic or Pacific.

" OK, OK, so the "jeep in a crate" is a bit of an urban legend. Yes, jeeps were shipped in
crates. Yes, those crates were warehoused. And yes, even some of them may have been
sold after the end of WWII. But mention that you heard about a secret warehouse stacked
with endless rows of Willys MBs or Ford GPWs and you won't get a diehard MV guy or a
militaria collector to put down his McMuffin and look you in the eye. Most folks in the hobby
recognize that the "jeep in a crate" is more myth than fact.

"However, the 21st century does offer a new version of this story — and this one is more
reality than urban legend. For years, the U.S. military has been selling big trucks — 2 1/2-ton
deuces" and 5-ton cargo trucks — for a fraction of what the trucks originally cost. Today,
someone wanting an "army truck" can search the government auctions and, for a couple of
grand, come away with a heck of a deal.

"For example, at a recent Government Liquidation (www.governmentliquidation.com) auction,
drivable 2 1/2-ton M35 6×6 trucks sold for as little as $1,500. The U.S. government paid
around $40,000 for each of these! Maybe a deuce is a bit bigger than a jeep, but that is a lot
of truck for $1.5K.

"All that said, don't let me deter anyone from looking through those warehouses for crates of
military surplus. It's still out there. Jeff Shrader of Advance Guard Militaria just located a full,
unopened crate of M1916 bacon cans...."