I am often amused at the articles in both mainstream publications and in the preparedness press that talk about using surplus military vehicles as “bug out vehicles” (BOVs). Sometimes these vehicles are basically stock, other times they are highly customized packages priced at $100,000 or more. In any event, I believe they are off the mark in their suggestions, although they do make for enjoyable reading.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like surplus military vehicles. I own (or have owned) several including an M35A2 Deuce and a Half with winch. an M818 semi-tractor, an M1009 CUCV, an M998 HMMWV, and an Air Force J20 Jeep ambulance with winch. I also have several trailers including an engineer equipment trailer, a 5/4 ton utility trailer and an artillery ammunition trailer.
In addition to the vehicles I own, Uncle Sam was kind enough to let me play with quite a few others during my 23 years of service including: M151A2 jeep, M109 van, M880 pickup, M887 contact truck, M1008 pickup, M820 van, M816 wrecker, M817 dump truck, M113 APC, M551 AR/AAV, D7 Dozer, M920 MET, and even a Bridge Erection Boat. While I don’t consider myself to be an expert on military vehicles by any means, I feel I do have more experience than many people do with them.
So of all these vehicles, which is the one I would use first as a bug out vehicle? The short answer is none of them. I would go with my 1997 Ford F350 quad cab turbo diesel 4×4. If I did have to choose one of these military vehicles as a bug out vehicle, it would be either the Jeep J20 5/4 ton Ambulance, the M880 Dodge pickup or the M1009 CUCV Blazer in that order.
Why am I reluctant to use one of the military vehicles as a bug out vehicle? Well for a lot of reasons. I’ll focus on the deuce and a half, but these comments are for the most part applicable to most of the military vehicles above.
In addition to just being old (mine is a 1968 vintage), the M35A2 uses 1940s technology and vehicle design. It is a 2.5-ton truck, so it is commonly called a “Deuce and a Half.” It includes things like drum brakes, an engine that is underpowered by today’s standards, manual steering, etc. The braking force is less than a modern half ton truck, this in a truck that weighs 13,500 pounds empty. The stock military tires are a compromise between on road and off road performance and do neither well. They were mainly designed to last a long time when parked in a motor pool under the hot sun.
The cab heater (if it has one) at best will keep you above freezing on cold winter days, and may not even work to defrost the windows. Cab cooling is the old 2-50 air conditioning, roll down two windows and drive fifty miles per hour. The seats are uncomfortable, even if “upgraded” to the spring assisted seats. If the truck has the older fixed seats, then driving in them for more than an hour is painful for anyone who is not a twenty years old with iron kidneys and bladder.
Steering is manual. The trick is to make sure your wheels are pointing to where you need to go next before you come to a stop, because if you need to turn them at a stop (especially on concrete) you may need to have your assistant driver stand on the running board to help you turn the wheel. Likewise, when driving on rough terrain, an unexpected rut or log can grab the front wheels, and cause the steering wheel to whip to the side. If you are driving with your thumbs inside the wheel, you will be lucky to get off with just a sprained thumb (happened to me once when I forgot). I know people who have had their thumbs broken that way. Between the size, the manual steering, the underpowered brakes, and the long-throw manual transmission, this is not a truck that an inexperienced driver can just hop in and operate. Something to keep in mind if your bug-out party includes physically smaller or older individuals who might need to share driving duties.
Although my truck can hit sixty-five or so going downhill, the practical top speed is fifty miles per hour. The turbo-charged 472 cu in engine makes around 135 horsepower and 330 ft-lbs of torque. This means that many hills will slow you down before you get over the top.
Off-road driving is also interesting in a deuce and a half, and not for the inexperienced. With ten wheels on the ground and a six-by-six drive train, a lot of articles talk about the M35 as a bug-out vehicle make you believe you can climb mountains with it. The truth is quite different. We have a local vehicle rally club that puts on a mud road rally each year. I took my deuce a couple of times, and had a blast, as the route took us from one level B or C maintenance country road to another. One year, one of the guys who normally drove a Jeep Wrangler had bought a five ton M818 tractor 6×6. With a Jeep, if you start to slide or get in trouble, you just point the front wheels where you want to go and usually can power out of it. That doesn’t work with a large military truck. You have to keep on top of driving it when off-road. If you start to slide, you are in trouble, so you are constantly correcting to keep out of trouble. The guy with the tractor didn’t figure that out. He tried to power out of a slide into a ditch, and just kept digging himself deeper and deeper. When someone caught up to me later in the course and I went back to help him, his 19,000 pound tractor was buried up to the axles on the driver side, leaning at a thirty degree angle in the ditch. Luckily my winch was up to the task, and we had him out in a couple of minutes. You can see a video on YouTube. Search for: “M818 Recovery” if you are interested.
Multi-Fuel Engine Caveats
The multi-fuel engine is also something that is often cited (for a deuce and a half anyway) as a feature that is desirable in a TEOTWAWKI situation. What multi-fuel means in reality is that it can burn diesel, kerosene, jet fuel (a type of kerosene), gasoline, or any mixture of the above. Thinking about reality, what are the chances you would find or stockpile large quantities of kerosene or JP8? This is a good thing for the military with huge supply stockpiles, but not so helpful for the rest of us.
As to the use of gasoline, burning pure gas does harm the engine. You are supposed to mix it with a bit over three quarts of motor oil for a fifty gallon fuel tank, or you will scorch the cylinders due to lack of lubricity in the gasoline. I suspect that finding that much motor oil will be more of a challenge than finding and using diesel fuel, to begin with. You might say that you could salvage motor oil from abandoned cars, but the used oil from one car would be needed for each tank and a half of gasoline. The gasoline can also wreak havoc with fuel lines and seals. You can also burn waste motor oil (wmo) as fuel straight or mixed with diesel, but even if you pre-filter you better keep a good supply of the primary and secondary engine fuel filters on hand.
One of the main reasons I would stick to my F350 or one of the militarized civilian vehicles mentioned above is parts availability. Right now, it is easy to buy any part I need for the deuce; I can get on the Internet, make a purchase, and have it delivered to my doorstep within a week. In a WROL scenario, I believe that finding parts for a surplus military vehicle will be next to impossible. The Internet and shipping services will likely not be available, and even if they are, there are questions some raise about currency, with a lot of folks talking about precious metals and barter being the only options. With the exception of a few parts like fuel and air filters, you will be hard-pressed to find a local supplier in most parts of the country. With my F350, the Jeep ambulance, the Dodge pickup, or Chevy Blazer, parts are a lot more readily available from either local parts supply stores, junk yards or things like Craig’s List or Facebook market pages.
Another reason the deuce and a half would not be my first choice would be working on it. Now don’t get me wrong, the M35A2 is designed to be simple to work on, especially for 18-year-olds with strong backs. Just changing a tire can be a challenge for many. I use a one inch drive electric torque wrench to remove the lug nuts (as opposed to a lug wrench and breaker bar to jump on). The torque wrench weighs 60 pounds and the tire weighs over one hundred pounds. Changing a couple of these can really be a workout. Splitting the rim, pulling out the inner tube or patching the tubeless tire is also a lot more work than on a regular-sized civilian vehicle.
The deuce and a half also does not lend itself to the grey man concept. It practically screams “I have stuff” to the more lawless elements of society that I would worry about during a critical scenario.
Does this mean I would abandon my M35A2 in a bug-out scenario? That depends, it would be useful for carrying a large amount of stuff from my home to a bug-out location, but only if it were safe to travel in convoy with one or more other vehicles using decent roads. Otherwise, it would stay at home.
Military trailers, however, are a different story. The engineer equipment trailer is about as close to perfect as you could find for a bug-out trailer. It is built like a tank, has plenty of room for cargo and on-the-wall storage for the type of tools you would need to clear a road while traveling. Civilian cargo trailers would sustain a lot of damage with their thin aluminum skins and lightweight structure if you had to take them on narrow trails through the woods. The engineer trailer would likely knock down small trees that would destroy civilian cargo trailers. The only change I would make to it would be to make it a little lighter, but the F350 and the engineer trailer make a really good combination.
To me, the only drawback I see to the F350 is that it is computerized. That’s why I am in the market for an M880 in good shape. Dodge pickup trucks and 318 V-8 engines are available in pretty much any scrap yard you run across, and the carbureted, non-computerized engine is very easy to work on.
I think a restored M880, with topper and the engineer trailer would be about the best bug-out vehicle money can buy.