This is anoth­er favorite Dinky Toys mod­el of mine, this time made by the French fac­to­ry from 1952 to 1955. It is the French Ford Refuse Truck, or Trash Truck, num­ber 25v, and fea­tures the tilt­ing rear bed, with slid­ing cov­ers and the open­ing rear com­part­ment door. In French, it was called the Ford Benne à Ordures. This is anoth­er one that I bought direct­ly from H. Hud­son Dob­son in the US.

One of my ear­ly Dinky Toy “jew­els”... why do I call it a jew­el? Because I bought this when I was only about 14, and I was imme­di­ate­ly impressed with how sol­id and impres­sive it was. This refuse or trash truck is some­what small­er than the Eng­lish Bed­ford ver­sion, but, to me, it is just more impres­sive. It has a rack to raise the rear bed, the slid­ing cov­ers are a much more pre­cise, and tighter fit, and the dark green fin­ish looks like it was poured on.

This was my very first Dinky Toys French com­mer­cial vehi­cle bought  in 1959, dur­ing a crazy two year stint where I bought dozens and dozens of new Dinky’s.  And, after almost 60 years, it is still one of my favorites.  As a young boy, I was imme­di­ate­ly struck and impressed with this French Ford trash truck... first, and most notice­able, was the gleam­ing, mile-deep dark green paint. 

But I was also impressed with the snug, close­ly fit slid­ing doors on the top. Slid­ing them open, then closed, was amaz­ing; they were so smooth... very dif­fer­ent than its Eng­lish cousin, the Bed­ford trash truck.  Then, there was the tilt­ing mech­a­nism, with a rack and gear oper­a­tion, that was also so smooth and pre­cise.  There was a lot going on, in a fair­ly small pack­age!

Years lat­er, I would aspire to slow­ly col­lect the oth­er French Ford trucks, a rather unique set of about 8 dif­fer­ent mod­els, with two dif­fer­ent wheel­bas­es: a short and a long ver­sion.  Great lit­tle trucks from a bygone era, but this is the one that real­ly caught my atten­tion, so long ago... and it is still almost pris­tine!