The M9 Hendrickson tractor unit and Cooper Jarrett double freighter was introduced in mid 1962. It had four main parts which were the tractor unit, The trailers and the dollie that joined the trailers together.
The Hendrickson tractor unit was always painted dark blue, it had silver trim to the headlights and grille and was fitted with a light green tinted window unit and a black baseplate, One very hard to find run had the roof mounted air horns silver plated but all others were gold plated and there are two castings of the air horns, The first had deeper openings in the end of the horns where the later had shallower openings.
The trailers were usually painted silver with a silver baseplate and either silver or blue trailer doors but one rare issue had the trailers painted grey all over, The decals were usually yellow and blue "Cooper Jarrett Inc" but a hard to find issue had orange, black & white "Cooper Jarrett International" decals, A smaller decal that matched the side decal design was applied to the front of the trailer.
The dollie that joined the two trailers together can be found in blue or unpainted die cast metal.
The early sets had a single face type wheel on the front axle and twin wheels which were molded in pairs which had a deep recess in the wheel center on all the others, later regular individual black plastic wheels were fitted to all axles, The axles were dome head with rounded ends.
Early issues of the baseplate on the cab had Hendrickson in inverted commas, ie 'Hendrickson' but these were removed from later issues.
The trailers originally has a tongue & slot attaching the front of the trailer body to the baseplate but this was later changed to a round rivet and when the round rivet was added a round column was added to the inside of the trailer above the new rivet, Also four pips were added midway along the trailer floor.
The Cooper Jarrett was a very popular toy in its day and boxed sets are still fairly common although the versions with either the silver air horns, the grey trailers or the orange decals are quite rare, It was packaged in three types of box, the first two were 'D' type and the last was an 'E' type, The Majors range was deleted in 1967 but this set was still shown in the 1967 pocket catalogue although it was deleted in 1967.
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