Art, obsession, and identity
Trucks and pickups may not be the most eye-catching of automobile designs, but as commercial motor vehicles created to carry cargo, they've been an essential mode of transport since the arrival of the steam-driven engine in the early 1900s. Perhaps nowhere else in the world has the evolution of the commercial truck been so well documented as in the United States. So, let's take a trip down memory lane and have a look at how these heavy-duty carryalls came into being.
Click through and keep on truckin'.
The Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company was an American brewery based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This image taken at the very end of the 19th century shows horse drawn delivery trucks in the brewery courtyard loaded with "the beer that made Milwaukee famous," according to the company's advertising slogan. Very soon, motorized vehicles of a quite different horse power would start carrying out the heavy work.
These two delivery trucks for the Denver Dry Goods Company were among the first elegantly designed White Motor Company trucks to be produced in 1900. White's early cars and trucks were steam-powered; their vehicles were made with gasoline engines starting in 1910.
In this early 20th-century image, a driver pauses in the cab of a lumber truck loaded with logs belonging to the P.L.H. Logging Company in Black Diamond, Washington. While the mining of coal was the region's main industry, logging also sustained the community.
A truck load of empty bottles in boxes collected from Bowie horse race track in Maryland. Piels Beer was originally based in Brooklyn, New York.
Sexton & Sons Monuments and Mausoleums, based out of Bridgeport and Stratford, Connecticut, was one of several headstone and gravestone businesses operating in the 1920s.
It looks like a still from an early movie, but this is a real scene of a prison chain gang detail from a Southern penitentiary working a quarry in the early 1920s. The dumper truck is being operated by two inmates.
A United States Post Office truck in the 1920s promoting stamps, cards, envelopes, and wrappers.
An REO Speedwagon equipped with Findley Electric Radio apparatus. The vehicle, first introduced in 1915, was a light motor truck manufactured by the REO Motor Car Company. It is an ancestor of the pickup truck. Incidentally, REO represent the initials of the company founder, Ransom E. Olds (1864–1950), after whom the REO and Oldsmobile brands are named. The American rock band REO Speedwagon is named after the vehicle.
The Kolb Bakery Co. of Philadelphia was established in 1911. The company were the first users of motor driven delivery trucks, which appeared in 1922, and were also the first to install radio equipment on delivery trucks, on which the drivers received last minute instructions from the office. The radio waves were picked up aerials fitted on top of the vehicles.
Thomas J. Crack (1887–1947) was a merchant who operated out of the Arlington County neighborhood of Ballston in Virginia. His "Groceries Meats and Provisions" delivery truck was a familiar sight on local roads.
A stationary New York Edison Company truck seen on the city's streets in the 1920s. The energy company dates back to 1882 and today is known as Consolidated Edison. Back in 1920. the New York Edison Company (then part of Consolidated Gas) was the market leader. Note the vehicle's tag line: "TRUCKING BY ELECTRICITY."
A Super Sentinel rigid six wheeler truck loaded with the Sunbeam 1000 HP. On March 29, 1927, British automobile pioneer Henry Segrave (1896–1930) drove the car to a new land speed record on Daytona Beach, achieving 327.97 km/h (203. 79 mph)—the first car to reach a speed over 320 KM/h (200 mph).
In 1901, Gottlieb Kuhner founded Kuhner Packing Co. At its height, the company, which operated out of Muncie, Indiana, was one of the 12 largest meat packing companies in the United States. Pictured is one of the Kuhner trucks, very heavy and larger than most because it was insulated to carry ice along with the meat products to keep them fresh during transit.
A streamlined Art Deco-style Labatt's beer delivery truck from the 1930s. The Labatt Brewing Company was founded in 1847 in London, Upper Canada (now Ontario).
A fleet of delivery trucks for the John Wanamaker Department Store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania neatly parked side by side for a 1940 publicity photograph. Established in Philadelphia in 1876 by John Wanamaker (1838–1922), the John Wanamaker Department Store was one of the first department stores in the United States.
Established in 1935, Keeshin Transcontinental Freight Lines, Inc. quickly developed into the United States' largest independent nation-wide truck transport organization. The company's fleet comprised of General Motor Company (GMC) commercial trucks. Pictured is a Keeshin truck in the late 1940s.
A flatbed truck groans under the weight of rolled newsprint being delivered to The Sun newspaper offices in New York City in the 1940s. The Sun was published from 1833 until 1950.
Two workers for E. Joseph, Inc. pose in 1945 while unloading poultry from a delivery truck and putting it on carts at Washington Market in New York City. The market was established in 1812 and operated until the early 1960s when the marketplace structures in Tribeca were demolished.
With the Second World War over, these young female volunteer factory workers hitch a ride home in a farmer's truck for the last time. While the conflict brought unprecedented labor opportunities for thousands of American women, those who elected not to work still found that many volunteer opportunities presented themselves.
A lineup of six Pettersen's Inc. delivery trucks with employees on Myrtle Street in Madison, Wisconsin, in February 1948. The sign on the trucks reads "Rugs, Carpets, Linoleum."
A freeway in Colorado pictured under construction in 1949. An oil truck is engineering one side of the road by spraying hot liquid bitumen onto the surface.
A truck, labelled "Grove's Health Train," and trailer advertising "Grove's Chill Tonic," is parked outside the Paris Medicine Company, the "Home of Laxative Bromo Quinine," in St. Louis, Missouri. The Paris Medicine Company was founded by entrepreneur Edwin Wiley Grove (1850–1927).
A heavy duty concrete mixing truck from the Colonial Sand & Stone Company delivers its cargo of aggregate and cement to a New York building site in the 1950s. Colonial played a pivotal role in the construction of some of the most iconic buildings of the NYC skyline, structures that include the Empire State Building and the George Washington Bridge.
Milwaukee's Sperry Candy Co. is remembered for its popular—if oddly named—"Chicken Dinner" candy bars. Throughout the 1950s the company operated a fleet of trucks designed in the shape of a chicken. Production of Chicken Dinner bars ceased in 1962.
A house moving truck on Country Route 537 near Freehold, New Jersey in the early 1950s. The GMC pickup has been adapted to carry the extra-wide load.
A Borden's Golden Crest milk truck and delivery driver pictured in New York City in the 1960s. Founded in 1857, Borden at one point was the largest US producer of dairy and pasta products.
Pure Oil became NASCAR's first official sponsor in 1951, a commercial relationship that lasted over 50 years, ending in 2003. This image from the mid-1960s shows Pure Oil employees atop a tanker.
The rear of a Home Heat fuel truck, with the motto "Your Comfort is Our Business," pictured in the mid-1960s.
A Smith Beverage Company truck pictured in 1960 and loaded with Budweiser beer leaves Philadelphia for deliveries across the United States.
A photograph of a partially built scale model of a North American X-15 research aircraft being trucked to the Cleveland Public Auditorium for complete assembly and display for the Space Science Fair of 1962. The X-15 set speed and altitude records in the 1960s, and reached the edge of outer space.
Sources: (Time) (WNYC) (Bridgeport Public Library) (National Motor Museum) (Sentinel Drivers Club) (Minnetrista) (Lumen) (Grove Arcade) (Daily Diesel Dose) (Milwaukee Notebook) (NASA)
The evolution of US commercial transportation
Keep on truckin'
LIFESTYLE Vehicles
Trucks and pickups may not be the most eye-catching of automobile designs, but as commercial motor vehicles created to carry cargo, they've been an essential mode of transport since the arrival of the steam-driven engine in the early 1900s. Perhaps nowhere else in the world has the evolution of the commercial truck been so well documented as in the United States. So, let's take a trip down memory lane and have a look at how these heavy-duty carryalls came into being.
Click through and keep on truckin'.