Italeri 1/24th American Cargo Trailer By Matt Bittner

Background

This long half trailer is typical of the vehicles used to transport goods across the United States. Despite being designed during the 60s and somewhat old-fashioned by current European standards, it is still made by dozens of companies for the American market thanks to its low production costs and long-lasting reliability. With thanks to Italeri for that description.

The Kit

Holy mackeral! I'm primarily a 1/72nd scale builder. When I opened this box and looked inside, I was in shock at the size of this beastie. There are 122 injected molded pieces, 18 of which are "chromed". There are also 9 rubber wheels. Everything is very well molded and looks very nice. There is one decal option, that being the one on the box top. Decals are in register and the colors are just amazing! Never thought I would say that a decal sheet is "beautiful", but between this trailer, and the Volvo tractor-truck (also reviewed in this issue) these are truly beautiful decals.

Construction starts with the underside and undercarriage. In fact, most of the 122 parts are for this area so take your time, study the instructions to be sure everything is placed correctly. Once the majority of the undersides are built then the instructions move to building the wheel/tire assemblies. You need to glue two pieces of the "chromed" parts together to make the wheel, and that is stuck inside one of the rubber tires. Don't forget to scrape off any chrome from the mating surfaces, otherwise the wheel-halves won't stick together very well.

Now that the undersides are finished constructions moves to the actual cargo "box". This area is far easier to assemble than the undersides, but still take your time because otherwise you may have a warped box. Once this is assembled then you bring it all together to make the entire trailer.

I would definitely paint the major subassemblies separately from each other. It will make your building experience a lot better and with this type of vehicle, I doubt there will be very many gaps to fill, if any at all.

Painting couldn't be simpler - black undersides with a white cargo "box". Pretty simple, I think.

Conclusion

This trailer, when built, will be large enough to fit my current, built-up WW1 French airforce inside. That tells you something about the size of this trailer. While there are a lot of parts, it doesn't appear to be overly complicated to assemble. Just take your time and you'll have a massive piece of American road-hauling equipment sitting on your shelf - probably large enough to take up the entire shelf.

My son, Aaron, has decided to take this - and the Volvo tractor-truck - on as his next project. I will definitely be there to help as I can, but I hope he'll be able to handle this on his own.

We would definitely like to thank Testors for this review beastie.