Many years ago I was at a junk yard in Nebraska that had an M8 converted to the yard wrecker. They had a boom welded to the gun turit for a rotating lifter upper thing. When I was in my ww2 craze, Nebraska was great hunting grounds. After the war, there was only a few bases that were the official surplus outlets, about 7 places I think, sorry, years ago I could name them, but now with fords on the brain...its gone. but, anyway, one was Omaha, and another was colorado springs. Typical of the pentigon, we needed to ship things to another location to sell them, back in those days. So, my point is, Nebraska folks had good access on both ends, east and west, to a surplus sale. I was big in halftracks, had 11 at one point, and western Nebraska sand hills was a great place to hunt for army junk. In 1949 the great blizzard that crippled the plains was proof of what the surplus vehicles could do. The National Gaurd ran around with halftracks and Studebaker weasels to feed families and cattle thru great snow depths, and after that the ranchers all wanted one. The sand hills was only navigable by horse until they had halftracks, and also those ford 8&9 n with track units were popular also. sorry for the ramble...I am down to one jeep now...thats enough! there is a very good youtube video from Wyoming PBS on the blizzard of 49 if interested.
