estate sale, so cal

[bobH]

Someone here might be interested if your in so cal this weekend.
Bernie Long estate SALE. Bernie collected for many, many years. Much of it from the wooden spoke wheel era, some post war. Lots & lots of rusty iron to look at. Some complete cars. Some flathead stuff, but not very much. Lots of old orchard trucks.
For info only. I have NO connection to this stuff.
Bernie Long Estate Sale, April 19, 20, 21
18929 Slover, Bloomington, 92316

[bobH]

The pictures I've posted probably cover less than half of what's there.

[40cpe]

Here is a link to an aerial map. It must be a sickness.

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0627.../data=!3m1!1e3

[TJ]

A lot of that stuff will go to the steel mill and come back as Chinese parts

[cas3]

interesting tat he had all that stuff in town! the city must have been on his back for years and years. they are celebrating now i bet

[J Franklin]

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Originally Posted by TJ

A lot of that stuff will go to the steel mill and come back as Chinese parts

It looks like the place is surrounded by scrap yards!

[jimTN]

The rarest of the rare truck is in there. A Fordson.

[1948F-1Pickup]

Originally Posted by cas3

interesting tat he had all that stuff in town! the city must have been on his back for years and years. they are celebrating now i bet

Maybe 6 miles from me. Been by there hundreds of times, never knew that stuff was in there. Both Fontana and Colton have a lot of places like that. It's slowly "cleaning" up, mostly as property gets more scarce due to the building of mega-warehouses..... which have sucked up lots of real estate in the area.

Come to think of it, apparently Bernie Long's place was the one featured on a SoCal episode of American Pickers.... he was another "I don't wanna sell anything" type. Always wondered where the place was- I knew it was local though.

[34pickup]

At what point does a man stop and look around and realize that it would be impossible to do anything of substance will all that he has collected over the decades? With me it was when I reached about 60. I realized that a lifetime goes by too quickly to ever complete even a fraction of what I had and then I started selling stuff. It is now manageable but I still have too many.

[Chris Haynes]

Bernie was a wonderful guy. I bought parts from him. He owned a junkyard. When anything interesting came in he took it home rather than scrap it.

[Old Redneck]

My kind of sale. I would try to buy it all. Then my wife would kill me. I make her load it and bring it home. Put it in the front yard?

[bobH]

Originally Posted by Chris Haynes

Bernie was a wonderful guy. I bought parts from him. He owned a junkyard. When anything interesting came in he took it home rather than scrap it.

I also believe Bernie was a wonderful guy. I'm proud to have called him my friend. We shared many great 'chats' (He did most of the talking). I first met him and Margaret on an EFV8 tour to Death Valley, a wonderful four-day introduction. My 34 even has one part that Bernie 'gifted' to me, for which I will be forever grateful.

[Flathead Fever]

I was there today. It had already been picked over real good before I got there. There is still tons and tons of stuff. The daughter's had already been selling stuff off long before the auction. I never heard about this stuff being for sale until this post on the Ford Barn. There were flathead intakes and heads laying all over bu I only saw one engine? I asked what happened to them? They had previously sold 70 flatheads engines to H&H.

I was in there maybe 30-year's ago. It was full of some really rare trucks, chain drive-trucks. trucks so old they had wooden frames. There use to be some '33- 34 pickups in there, that's what interested me. I was hoping they would still be there They were long gone. Anything truck related from the 1930s on back use to be in there. You can't imagine what all was in there. He owned a wrecking yard back when really old trucks were being scrapped. He kept this separate lot from his wrecking yard to store this stuff. So much of these parts are off trucks so rare that nobody will ever know what they came off of. A lot of it was disassembled and left out in elements and just got destroyed, piles and piles of gears and rear ends that will just have to be scrapped. You could not count the amount of wire wheels on racks. Adjustable 16" wire rims but they were not Ford bolt patterns. Even 16" adjustable spoke rims that were a 4-bolt pattern? Shipping containers of truck wooden spoke wheels. It was fun just crawling through the stuff. In the end I only spent $5.00 on a gauge.

[Flathead Fever]

I remembered something else. Somebody told Berinies stuff had been featured on American Pickers. When they cameout Bernie refused to sell them anything. The later came back and bought a car and paid with a check. "Alledgedly" after they got the car they stopped payment on the check. I doubt that happened with a major TV show but anyway that was the story I was told. I can definitely see Bernie not selling anything to them. I ran into him at a Model A swap meet a couple year's ago. He was in a wheelchair and being pushed around. I talked with him as his assistant helped him pee into a bottle. That was a little ackward. I wanted a '34 pickup cab and asked him if he had any. He said he had several. He said, "what are they worth". I was honest and said the ones I have seen lately have been around $1500.00 without doors but they have been all rusted out. He said he had some rust free cabs without doors for $1600.00 each. He said I can't find any good doors. This is former orange grove country around here. He said the first thing the farmers did with those pickups was take doors off because they got in and out of them so much tending to the orchards and that's how doors all vanished on them. I've heard the same story from several people.

Today, they had two thick binders of pink slips out. One pink slip on each page with the car they went to written in bold letters on the same page. They were tryng to match pink slips up with the trucks and cars that were selling. There might have been 100 pink slips in there? I glanced over as they were flipping pages and I saw pink slips dated 1947, 1949.... That's probably when he started hauling this stuff home. This was not a hoarder as some people might think looking at the photos. He ran a legitimate wrecking yard across the street. There is a big story behind that. The city sued him because it did not fit it with their redevelopment plans and gave him a dead line to get rid of all the cars in the junkyard or they would remove them and charge him for doing it. He had to move the stuff, they were scrambling to get it it all off the property with about one week left. I didn't know Bernie or ever seen his truck collection. I just happened to be driving down the street that day and stopped to look at the vehicles that were coming out of the junkyard on wreckers, Falcons, Rancheros. Typical old junkyard with 1960s vehicle stacked on top of each other. When I stopped they told me what was going on so I stayed awhile and helped move vehicles. That was when I got to see the secret vintage truck junkyard across the street. Later he sued the city for seizing the junkyard. I believe it was $2,000,000.00 he won. It was in the newspapers at the time.

[Flathead Fever]

I went back today to the estate sale and dug some more. I took a lot of photos. These old trucks are so interesting you could hooked on them.T They had rounded up some of the loose radiators into one place. Here is a lesson in radiator core designs. I tried to buy that 1917 to 1920 Fordson Tractor radiator. It was beautiful, not a rust pit on it and it still had its Ford Script radiator cap.That was being sold with the Fordson truck which you will see in a minute.

[Flathead Fever]

This was being loaded on a trailer when I got there today. I think they said it was last registered in Bernie's name in 1949.

[Flathead Fever]

The Fordson Truck. Its the only one I have ever seen. I got a quick lesson on it today. The radiator with Fordson down the side is from a English tractor or truck. This was an American Fordson Truck. The correct radiator was that one in the stack of radiators. That one was going with the truck and it probably should since the phone bidder at the auction bought it for $50,000.00

[Flathead Fever]

This might be 10% of the rims. They are everywhere. Today a guy bought every single wire and wooden rim. I have to get back down there and go through the wooden rims and look for ones that might fit the project I bought today. I must have lost my mind!

[cas3]

aw comon! your not going to show us what you bought? now i feel cheated! that fordson truck is interesting. never heard of one before. it appears to be in the model t era, model t headlights, and the doors look very much like a model t tudor. but i see a shift lever, and henry would not have gone for that!

[RobR'35]

Absolutely incredible. Thanks for sharing the photos!