GMC CCKW

History

GMC CCKW
Specifications
Type	2½-ton Truck
Maximum Speed	90 km/h

The US army seeing a need for a general purpose truck put out a tender for a 6x6 Truck. General Motors, which was already supplying modified commercial trucks to the Army, modified the 1939 ACKWX that were manufactured for the French Army into the CCKW. The CCKW was the chosen design for the us armed forces and was quickly entered into production. With the US army it saw heavy service, predominantly as cargo trucks, in both World War II and the Korean War. The original "Deuce and a Half", it formed the backbone of the famed Red Ball Express that kept Allied armies supplied as they pushed eastward after the Normandy invasion. Of the almost 2.4 million trucks that the U.S. Army bought between 1939 and December 1945, across all payload weight classes, some 812,000, or just over one third, were 2 1⁄2-ton trucks. GMC's total production of the CCKW and its variants, including the 21⁄2-ton, 6x6, amphibian DUKW, and the 6×4, 5-ton (on-road) CCW-353, amounted to some 572,500 units – almost a quarter of the total WW II U.S. truck production.