Back in March, I found a somewhat similar vehicle and, oddly enough, it was also priced at $5,000. This one is listed as a 1953 Willys Jeep Trencher, which supposedly is a custom build according to the seller, but it’s surely based on the Go-For-Digger. It can be found on Craigslist in Amado, Arizona – between Tucson and the Mexican border.

I’m kicking myself for not grabbing that blue Go-For-Digger with the backhoe attachment a few months ago. I could have found a use for that, maybe, but I can’t think of a single use for a trencher. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love it. In reading through the comments on the Go-For-Digger post, some of you have experience with a Willys Jeep-based trencher like this. Barn Finds has such a wide variety of experienced vehicle owners! The seller explains that sometime in the early-1950s, the University of Arizona created this trencher. The seller restored it for a friend who dug his trenches and now wants to sell it. I’m not sure about the “restored” part, it sure looks like it could use a major sprucing up to me, but maybe that was quite a while ago. The Go-For-Digger had a trencher attachment that looked exactly like this one, so I’m fairly certain that this isn’t, or wasn’t, a custom build. I’m not sure where that came from, maybe a story that had been passed down through the decades?

This is one rugged-looking interior. I’m guessing that the AC needs charged.. Ha, just kidding, of course there’s no AC in this Willys trencher. There are also no engine photos but this one should have the F134 Hurricane with around 75 hp. There was a company called Auburn Machine Works, Inc. in Auburn, Nebraska who made an attachment called a Jeep-A-Trench and it looked somewhat similar to the Go-For-Digger trencher attachment, which was made by the Go For Digger Trenching Machine Company. The big visual difference between the two trenchers is that the rear portion was rounded on the Jeep-A-Trench as opposed to being angled like this one is. Here’s a YouTube video of a Jeep-A-Trench in action! It’s a mystery who made this thing, or even what year this Jeep is. My money is on this one being an actual factory-built Go-For-Digger model, not a custom trencher built by a University or even a Jeep-A-Trench, just based on the period literature that I’ve seen. Thoughts? Whatever it is, I like it, a lot. Let’s hear those stories about your experiences with these things!