Trucks come in several shapes and sizes. Over the years, buyers have had the choice of flatbeds, long beds, short beds, side-step beds, and more. On top of that, custom fabrication shops and some shade-tree mechanics go even further to tailor a truck to the needs of its owner. Then there’s the Chevrolet Longfoot. At least five decades have passed since the first Longfoot rolled onto public roads with a gigantic bed. Since then the question has been, who authorized it? Was it a GM factory product with a special code? After a lot of digging, we’ve learned the truth.
Long beds aren’t extinct today, but they are somewhat rare. When a Toyota Tundra buyer picked up his truck with a double cab and an eight-foot bed it broke the internet because of how long the truck looked. Most truck beds today are under 6.5 feet in length. The Chevrolet Longfoot boasted up to a 12-foot bed behind the cab.
Having not known these existed before today, I’ve done a little digging thanks to some great sourcing from The Bishop, and here’s what I’ve found so far. Longfoot trucks are, according to those who dare to speak about them online, a single-cab on a double-cab chassis with a custom bed built to between 10 and 12 feet at the rear. “Longfoot literally was… a regular cab on a crew cab frame,” says Daniel Johnson on a Squarebody Facebook group. Others in that same place say that the practice began as far back as 1947.
A piece on ChevroletForum.com claims that “Converters would weld metal from different beds together and paint the new bed to match the truck. Then they would weld additional metal on the frame and bolt the bed on top of this new frame. Finally, they would install new extra-long metal brake lines and extend the electrical for the tail lamps.” Does that mean that every Longfoot has a custom-fabricated frame? It’s unlikely and perhaps not necessary depending on the length of the bed in question.
Every photograph we can find of the Longfoot has a single cab. All of this lines up with the idea that these are indeed a single cab on a double-cab chassis and that they have a custom box built onto the back. What makes all of this strange is just how clean the Longfoot looks. At least one example has a great Longfoot logo/script on the tailgate. It would seem to indicate that GM or Chevrolet built it.
Notably, that particular truck pictured above seems to pop up from time to time all over the internet. At one point it was even up for sale for the low low price of $3,451. What looks like exactly the same truck popped up on Reddit in May of 2023. A post on Facebook from the StoryCars account appears to show it (and at least one other truck) in a couple of other settings as well. It’s certainly not the only super-long-bed pickup we’ve found though.
A little over two years ago, someone tried to sell a dually version from 1987.
In this case, it was a GMC, but like every other Longfoot we’ve found, it had a single cab and a very long bed out back. While a few called it out as “not a true Longfoot” it’s tough to say exactly what a “true Longfoot” really is.
“Not a true Longfoot, that is a pre-1979 bed with a front section welded on with a standard cab on a crew cab frame.,” one person said. Someone else though talked about building their own. “I did the same thing to mine years ago. Just welded 2 beds together,” they say.
We’ll come back to that though. First, more classic examples.
A person showed off a red-and-white version in 2010 on another Chevy trucks forum. One person on NastyZ28.com even goes as far as to claim (with no evidence mind you) that yes indeed these were factory-built trucks.
“Chevy/GMC built extra long pickups. Ford, Dodge and International also offered them. They are very rare as it was aimed at a niche market. A friend used to have one with the 12 foot bed. It was yellow and I know it wasn’t this truck repainted as it got hit by a train when he “thought” he was clear of the tracks. Yes, beer was involved.
I got several in an auction lot when I ran a salvage yard. Since so few were built, the mechanics were the only thing I was able to sell. Some fenders and such but the beds were scrapped. If you bought one, you ordered a cab and chassis and the bed was installed prior to delivery. In Dodges case it was a special products department that built them. The same one that built the ’59 Dodge Sweptside with Desoto station wagon rear quarters.”
Niche market seems like the appropriate term for the few folks who needed to only ever carry one person but also several miniature telephone poles in the bed with regularity. It’s true that for some time Chevrolet did offer an extended-bed pickup.
Dubbed the Chevrolet Longhorn (or the Custom Camper if you bought it from GMC), it came with an eight-and-a-half-foot bed. “The extra half-foot was added by shoving the regular cargo box along the frame ‘ and then by inserting a short panel at the forward end of the box where it intersects with the cab,” says a contemporary Motortrend article.
Honestly, it’s kind of similar to adding the leaf to the dining table that your parents probably had. You can clearly see the seam on Longhorn (and Custom Camper) trucks. Notably, the Longhorn ended production in 1972.
The blue Longfoot pictured above is a 1974 model so it’s possible that custom fabrication shops simply picked up the market for the Longhorn when production ended. If that’s truly what happened it’s clear that they were ready to go the extra mile. Well, at least the extra few feet.
The first Longfoot mentioned in this article evidently had a plaque on it denoting that “The Horton Company” built it. “I CALLED THE COMPANY AND IT SEEMS TO BE ONE OF ONE. THERE IS NO RECORDS OF IT BACK THEN,” the post says. We too have done research on which Horton company this might be to no end.
Finally, let’s circle back to what a “true Longfoot” really is. Despite several different posters that talk about the trim online, Chevrolet nor GM appears to have any official references anywhere. Based on what we’ve found, a “true Lightfoot” is likely a Chevy or GMC custom fabricated after 1972.
The real question is: When did the fabrication of the bed take place? If it happened before the original customer picked it up, it would seem to qualify as a Longfoot. If it happened after, it might not. Just to see if we can get a little more official info we’ve reached out to Chevrolet for comment.
Here’s what it told us. “The truck was not manufactured by GM, with those current dimensions. As the title suggests, custom modifications were made to create the long bed feature it currently hosts.”
So sadly enough, this wasn’t a production-spec option at any time according to General Motors. On the other hand, what constitutes a “real Longfoot” is now totally up for interpretation. Run wild you Longfoot lovers and let’s see how long you can go!
I used to have a 72 chevy pickup truck with a 9 foot bed and it did not have a seam in it it was a custom 20 with a 3 speed on the column and a 250 six cylinder I loaded it once with 15 railroad ties and twenty bags of mulch and it did very well going through Howard County Maryland
I’ve driven a long bed regular cab pickup for work, for the last 13 years or so. I know this might sound crazy, but some of us actually need a truck to be, well, a truck. Some of us don’t drive a pickup as a family vehicle and actually put stuff in the bed (Eek!). If they offered a 10′ bed, I’d have considered it. A twelve might be a bit much (my wife might disagree). With a 10′ bed you could easily transport lumber up to 14′ without having to strap it to the top. I like it.
Here’s the funny meme for it:
https://images.app.goo.gl/HgRE2Y738vsafBCU8
I didn’t know these existed and really appreciated learning the history. Thanks, Rivers!
And my truck is the opposite. A crewcab that started as a regular cab ’64 F100 long bed truck. Crown took that, cutoff the front 1/3 of the bed and moved the front of the bed to the front of the cutoff bed and welded it on badly. They shoved most of another single cab in that space. The back of the second cab was added to the cut-off back of the original cab. Rear doors were modified to reduce their size. The leader in the 5 1/2 foot bed game!
In the early 70s, my dad and a crew he worked with, showed up at our house with a massive truck that had two rear axles and looked similar to the Longfoot just bigger. In the bed was a small industrial sized diesel generator. They were taking it to the oil fields in west TX. The thing was so heavy it rutted our asphalt driveway. A day later they were gone.
I was too young to really pay a lot of attention to it, but the memory stuck. No idea of make/model but no doubt this was a custom build, these guys owned a serious machine shop and could fabricate anything.
I would LOVE to have this!
Definitely agriculture niche, but the longfoot could have been used as watermelon trucks. That industry has moved on to chopped up school busses that can both harvest and be the sales stand.
These are also known as Yokel Stretch Limos. You have to wear your Canadian Tuxedo to drive them, though.
Checkmate round-earthers. Explain this YOU CAN’T!
Strikes me as *ridiculously* niche. If you need a 12′ bed, just order a LWB cab & chassis and fit an aftermarket flatbed or stakebed (or build your own).
Aside from a lower load floor, I can’t see any advantage to spending time and money to fabricating a 12′ pickup bed.
I have heard that these were built to haul extra huge slide in campers. I can think of several other uses for which a long pickup bed would be better than a long flatbed. When hauling ATVs or engines or tools or whatever, I have wished on more than one occasion that my 8′ bed was 10′.
What about those use cases would be better with a pickup bed versus a flatbed with drop sides? With the sides up you have more space than a pickup bed and with the sides down you have better access to the load without having to climb up.
You are correct that a flatbed is likely the most economical solution to purchase, but I’d bet the aerodynamics of the pickup box make is more economical to drive.
Other use cases? Possibly DOT related to weigh stations on commercial trucks. There are times when you get a load of dirt or something that simply works better with a pickup box. And finally, the slide-in camper that would have a lower COG in a pickup bed while allowing an auxiliary fuel tank.
Biggest issue I see with these things is that you are adding weight to the vehicle in order to be carrying more stuff. An example is the slide-in camper. An 11′ Lance or Bigfoot camper weighs about 4500#, which is way more than a truck of that vintage could legally haul. Add 700# of fuel in a 100# auxiliary fuel tank, and you are asking for a tire failure or axle failure. On the other hand, if you are in the business of hauling cotton, this might be the answer to your prayers.
So the “true” ones were probably ordered as just chassis cabs and then the custom beds were fabricated and bolted on.
Yep, that’s the answer, easy enough to do.
https://www.gmc.com/trucks/sierra-3500hd-chassis-cab
Not sure how they did it back in the day, but with current cab/chassis set-ups the frame spacing is different and they try to make the rails straight. Super easy to add a standard box that way. Pickup boxes are different; standard pickups typically have wider frames with plenty of bends in them. People can make boxes fit C&C frames, but it isn’t easy.
I like the longfoot and mega cabs more than I should
The title refers to this Chevy as the Bigfoot of the pickup truck world, but I’m pretty sure that honor belongs to Ford.
Bigfoot has run Chevy engines since 2012 (Bigfoot 19 and 23) and has even been Chevy-bodied at times.
It has to have been made from a cab and chassis frame, not a crew cab.
A square body crew cab has a 164.5″ wheelbase compared to a 131.5″ for a regular cab. That extra 33″ doesn’t take you from an 8 foot to 12 foot bed.
Thank you for doing the math. That statement did seem sketchy
Something else interesting about the idea that these are “factory” longfoots (Longfeet?). Look at the Chevy Longhorn. There is a HORRIBLE factory seam 6 inches behind the front of the bed, where they added the extra piece. They didn’t even try since it was a fairly niche product. These longfoot are fully finished so you can’t see the seam. I think it likely that Chevy would NOT have gone to that effort. they would have done the same as the longhorn bed, left the seam. Much like the factory quad cabs of the past (where they just attached to cabs together, and ran unmodified doors with a big ugly triangle between them), the people buying these were likely fleet and wouldn’t have cared about the appearance, just the utility.
You can always see the seam where they grafted the long rear end onto a 15 passenger van. With trucks and vans, I doubt they’d go to the effort to make it look nice.
We used to have a Power Wagon at the farm with a 9 foot bed it would haul 2 medium round bales