Who cares about an old truck? On Alcatraz, a whole lot of people do

Sometimes it is the small things that are important — a gift, a helping hand, something extra. Consider Daniel Webster’s remark about Dartmouth: “It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it!”

So this is a small story, about a group of people who fell in love with an old truck that was rusting away and brought it back to life.

Who cares about an old truck? Well, these people did, because this is an ordinary truck made extraordinary by a history that includes a slice of Hollywood, a role on Alcatraz Island, a park ranger, some automotive craftspeople and a bit of Americana.

The truck is a Chevrolet flatbed model, built in GM’s Oakland plant in 1946. It came with a standard six-cylinder engine. Stick shift. Nothing fancy. A reliable truck, a workhorse.

These Chevys were ordinary as dirt when they were new 74 years ago, but now they are classics; there are pages full of information about them on the internet. A clean ’46 Chevy truck now costs almost as much as a brand-new car.

This one spent most of its working life on a farm in Louisiana. A Hollywood studio bought it and brought it to Alcatraz in 1993 as a prop for the movie “Murder in the First,” about a small-time thief serving time on the Rock. Kevin Bacon starred. The truck also had a cameo role in “Alcatraz,” a television series that lasted 13 episodes.

By this time, of course, the prison had been closed for years, and the island became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Alcatraz may be the most famous prison in the world. It has a grim fascination. More than a million visitors come to see the Rock every year.

The old truck had a vintage look to it, perfect for the prison era, so the National Park Service was delighted when the film people donated the Chevy. Rangers used it to haul supplies up the steep island roads. “Visitors used to stop me all the time,” said ranger John Cantwell. “They’d ask about the truck,” or they’d say, “My grandfather had one just like this.”

So the Park Service realized the truck was an interpretative tool to tell the story of the island and how it operated.

Anyone who has had an old car knows what happened next: The truck wore out. It needed brakes. It needed a new coat of paint.

Money is always a problem in the Park Service; there is never enough. So the Park Service works with local citizens and companies in partnerships. The trick, of course, is to have the right partners.

For the truck project, it was Alcatraz Cruises, which ferries visitors to the island, and European Collision Center, a San Francisco outfit that specializes in repairs to high-end cars, a kind of Mayo Clinic for expensive damaged cars.

Cantwell heard about the European Collision Center from a friend of a friend. Cantwell had taken over the truck project, and he knew that the truck needed more than a paint job. He also knew that once the Collision Center got a look at the truck it would be love at first sight. “We have a passion for older cars,” said Ludwik Rutkowski, the firm’s production manager.

The salt air of Alcatraz had done its work: Rust was king, the cab was rotten, and so was everything else. Sometimes they had to fabricate new parts. Once they sent it to Reno for a new cab roof. The whole project took three careful years.

The truck is 99.9% finished, ready to go back to Alcatraz on the next supply boat. It stands, glistening in new blue paint, under the lights at the European Collision Center plant in an industrial area of San Francisco. The old Chevrolet is surrounded by gleaming expensive European cars, but it’s in a class by itself.

“I’ve had people walk right past a $200,000 Porsche we’ve just finished, polished up like a brand-new car, to look at that old truck,” said Dennis Kirkpatrick, the firm’s manager.

He thinks trucks like this are part of the American heritage, something everybody remembers. “You remember riding in the back of your grandfather’s truck or your uncle’s truck. It’s like they were part of the family,” Kirkpatrick said.

They were simple to fix, but not easy to drive. No power steering, no automatic transmission, no Alexa or Siri to give directions, no trouble lights, no computers. “There was no way you could text and drive a truck like this,” Kirkpatrick said. You had to pay attention. “You had to be engaged to drive it.”

But they had style.

“My great-grandfather had one just like that back on the farm in Iowa,” said Scott Allison, area sales manager for Audi of America. He was in the shop to look over some work on his own showroom-ready cars and stayed to admire the ’46 Chevrolet truck. “Cars like that,” he said, “are rolling art.”

The European Collision Center went well beyond the contract to restore the truck. “We did it out of affection for the Bay Area, and for generations to come who will see it as part of the history of Alcatraz. It was a labor of love,” Kirkpatrick said.