The truck that needs no roads!”
It was a new concept in motoring: a weathertight, four-wheel-drive vehicle that could do 55 mph on the road, scramble through the roughest off-road terrain, and run a variety of powered accessories suitable for farm work, utility work, forestry, and much more. Perfected through the trials of World War II, the civilian version of Dodge’s internationally famed Power Wagon would be sold in America from 1946 through 1968. It remains a capable classic that is increasingly sought-after and valuable today, in stock form and even highly customized.
Early Power Wagon sales brochures emphasized the variety of uses for this “Job-Rated” truck: it was the ultimate function-over-form vehicle that could be adapted to master nearly any task, taking the place of numerous other specific implements. Dodge engineered the Power Wagon to be simple and strong, which resulted in a good survival rate for the more than 95,000 examples built in three basic series, grouped by years: 1946-’50, 1951-’56, and 1957-’68. An online registry—t137.com/registry/index.php—collects details for posterity and offers a serial-number decoder.
While the U.S.’s evolving safety and emissions regulations in the late 1960s made adapting the old workhorse economically unviable, steady demand from other markets meant the final WM300-chassis Power Wagons — (wearing Fargo badges for Canada and De Soto emblems for Central
