When Crown went out of business some of the employee's started West Coach. I don't remember exactly how it went down, but somewhere along the line the sales records were sold off. It's a good thing that a few people had the presence of mind to buy them. I'm pretty sure the records would have been trashed otherwise. I now know the sales history of my 57' Atomic and this TV truck.
One of the guys with the records sent me this in an email.
Hi Charles, I found the specs on the TV unit, it was built as a Highway Post Office dated 12-12-58, but it must have sat around for a year and a half, as it was invoiced to Ampex on 7-12-60 to be modified as a TV unit. It was sold to Louisiana Television Broadcasting Corp. of Baton Rouge on August 5, 1960.
Here is a link to WBRZ history. The second photo is of my Crown when it was new.
http://www.wbrz.com/wbrz-history/
Later he added this:
Here's a nutshell history of the Crown TV rigs:
There are Ampex documents at Stanford U, about 30 miles from where I live. Ampex is still in Redwood City, but it's a shadow of its old self. Bing Crosby was heavily involved in the development of recording growth.
Ampex did several TV rigs with Crown, the first being for Jack Linkletter (Art's son) in 1959 for a syndicated daytime show called On the Go. The rig is said to have cost $300k. Then, in 1960, Red Skelton ordered 3 separate units for $1 million total, planning to go around the world. Three years later, he sold them to KTLA, where they had a long second life. One has survived as an RV conversion in Burbank area.
A.H. Belo (WFAA Dallas) was the next one. There were a couple more, I have a list somewhere. One of these others did independent work for companies such as Marathon Oil (I have a 1961 article on this).
This is when the cameras were 300 lbs and similar to the one on that website. It's ironic that today's technology allows all this equipment to be stored in one van.
The USPS HPO program ended in 1974. Many of the rigs were auctioned off. A sound company in Hollywood bought 2 of them. One was stolen in broad daylight from Sunset Blvd. The other one lasted until 1998, when some friends bought it. Another friend now owns it, although he rarely takes it out. All the equipment has been removed, miles of cable and lots of other things.
