Two-way radios had been around for a few years when CCJ editors wrote how the devices also could be implemented into a fleet’s safety program. Drivers could notify dispatchers about traffic jams so that other drivers could be alerted to steer clear of the area, while fleet inspectors in the office could learn of accidents or incidents immediately. “It’s then a simple matter to find the driver and check his performance.”

It’s hard to image getting too excited today about saving $8 to $10 a month on fuel. But then again, a hamburger cost a nickel in the 1930s. And $10 would buy a lot of burgers at that price. The Dodge Brothers Company started life in 1900, supplying parts for the newly emerging auto industry in Detroit. By 1914, however, the company was building and selling its own line of automobiles. In 1926, the company was acquired by the Chrysler Corporation. Even at this early stage of the game, the automakers that would become The Big Three were attempting to market and sell different brands to buyers from different social backgrounds and income levels. Chryslers were at the top of the pyramid at the Chrysler Corporation, with Plymouth in the basement as the economy brand and Dodge and DeSoto somewhere in the middle. Over time, Dodge steadily took on a more blue collar persona than DeSoto – thanks in large part to the company’s emergence as a leading light truck producer by the 1930s.

Determined to reduce accident rates and improve emergency response times, Pennsylvania Turnpike developers installed "the most outstanding system of highway radio communication in the country," according to Turnpike officials. The two-way radio communication system consisted of equipment located in each of the Turnpike's 10 ticket offices and police headquarters and made it possible for trucking companies to check on and locate late, lost or stolen trucks in order to expedite freight movement. Twenty-six police patrol cars were outfitted with two-way radios so large it filled the vehicle's entire trunk.

There were so many truck manufacturers in the 1930s – including strong regional players -- that sorting out any sort of marketshare leadership standings must’ve been maddening for CCJ editors. Still, in terms of national brand awareness and sales figures, Mack was at the top of the heap by any reckoning.  By 1939, Mack was nearly 40 years old with an absolutely stellar reputation for quality and durability. Tough little Mack ACs had made the company’s name on the battlefields of World War I, where British soldiers dubbed them “Bulldogs” – a testament to their dependability as well as their distinctive sub-nosed front ends.  Another war was looming. And soon enough Macks would find themselves in combat zones all around the world. But, in 1939, the company was touting the launch of its first diesel truck engine and establishing a powertrain legacy that is still going strong today.

FWD is another of the many truck manufacturers competing for fleet business in the 1930s. But FWD had a gimmick: All of its trucks featured a four-wheel-drive powertrain, which the company claimed made for safer driving, regardless of application or road conditions. And although the company primarily focused on construction truck sales, as this ad shows, it didn’t believe four-wheel-drive precluded it from long-haul operations at all. The Four Wheel Drive Auto Company was founded in Clintonville, Wisconsin, in 1909. It’s first vehicle model was branded “The Battleship” – a name that just really doesn’t stand up all that well today. Unfortunately for FWD, the concept of full-time four-wheel-drive never caught on with American truck buyers. The company eventually found a niche in the fire truck market and today its name and assets are owned by Seagrave.

As I was digging through the CCJ archives looking for interesting blog fodder, this ad caught my eye. It’s one in a series of ads Gulf Oil Company was running in 1938 playing up the end of the Great Depression and the good fortune of being an American as war clouds gathered in Europe.  Initially, of course I fixated on the flustered motorist wigging out over .30 cent gallons of gas. We’d all start turning cartwheels if we could find someone to sell us gas for that price! But, as another ad in the series pointed out, gasoline at the time was selling for about .13 cents a gallon. So maybe Mr. Cool Fedora Motorist had a right to be upset, after all. I also like the guy buying the shotgun – although he’d get laughed out of my hunting club pretty quick if he showed up wearing those fancy duds. And let’s not even bother discussing the guy smoking a cigarette at the gas pumps while the service station attendants crawl all over his car.  Yes, Gulf was doing its part ...

Today, in an era where you don’t need all your fingers to count up the number of heavy-duty truck manufacturers in business, it’s odd to think that fleets had a much wider array of choices when it came to truck brands in the 1930s. Over time, most of these independent truck manufacturers either went out of business altogether or were snapped up by healthier (usually high-volume) competitors.  Diamond T was one such, well-known brand. The company started building motor cars at the turn of the century and made a name for itself selling powerful (for the time) touring cars. But by the 1930s, Diamond T was becoming increasingly known for it’s well-built, powerful truck line.  The company enjoyed a heyday in the late 1930s and into the war years. The British government bought large volumes of the company’s 980/981 models for use as tank transporters in the Western Desert campaign against Hitler’s Afrika Corps. The U.S. military also bought large numbers of Diamond T’s after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

I’ve always been a fan of 1938 and ’39 Chevrolet styling. Mainly because I built a model of a ’39 Chevy Coupe as a kid and have considered the company’s styling from those years to be iconic ever since.  Of course, flipping through dusty old issues of CCJ for this blog, I was struck by how similar car styling for all makes and models was during the late ‘30s. Willys, Buick, Ford, Plymouth, Dodge and Chevy all pretty much look alike to our modern eyes.  By 1930, Chevy and Ford were already locked in a battle for market supremacy that continues to this day. Ford held the upper hand in terms of power, with its V-8 gas engine: Technology GM would not be able to produce until the Ford patents expired in the 1950s. But Chevy wasn’t willingly ceding any ground in the truck market to its arch rival, as this feature-heavy 1938 ad shows.

Today, CCJ’s editorial focus is clearly on trucks – heavy-duty trucks in particular. But for much of its history, the magazine focused on any commercial vehicle, including taxi cabs, station wagons, sedans and coupes, as this late ‘30s Plymouth ad shows.  Plymouth was a late-comer to the automotive market. The brand was founded by Chrysler in July, 1928, as a low-cost competitor with Ford and Chevy. An early Plymouth innovation was the concept of “floating power,” which attached the car’s engine to the frame at only two points ("fore-and-aft"), defining an axis that passes through the engine's center of mass. This greatly reduced the transmission of torsional vibration to the chassis and resulted in the slogan, “The Economy of a Four, the Smoothness of a Six” in Plymouth advertising.  By the late ‘30s, Plymouth was firmly entrenched as the third highest-selling automotive brand in the country – and can very close to taking the second-place spot away from Ford on the eve of World War II.  Plymouth continued to be an engineering innovator and sales leader through the 1950s, but thanks to cross-brand ...

This editor’s choice for hands-down coolest 1930s ad goes to… I’ve already written about International Harvester once in my internet tour of CCJ in the ‘30s. But I just couldn’t bear to bid the decade adieu without profiling this ad from a 1939 issue of CCJ. Of course, as one of the trucking industry’s heavy-hitters, IH had the money to hire Madison Avenue’s best agencies to handle their advertising. And this ad is a really fine example of late ‘30s advertising at its finest. Everything about the ad, from the vivid colors to the styling of the trucks to the gear the oil field workers are wearing is a great image of a world that no longer exists.

Did you know that from 1912 to 1918 the second largest selling automobile brand in the United States after Ford was Willys-Overland? Founded in 1908 when John Willys (pronounced “Will-is”) purchased Overland Automotive from the Standard Wheel Company, the renamed Willys-Overland Corporation enjoyed a string of successes right up until the 1920 recession knocked it for a loop that it never quite recovered from. By the time the ‘30s rolled around, the company had fallen considerably, and was known primarily as a producer of dependable, if unremarkable cars and light trucks. Fate, however, would give Willys one last chance at the big time: The company was one of three manufacturers chosen by the U.S. government to produce Jeep scout cars. When the war was over, Willys retained the rights for civilian Jeep production, but struggled to find a market for the utilitarian vehicles – even attempting to market them as alternatives to conventional farm tractors. In 1953, Willys-Overland was acquired by the Kaiser Motor Company. The Willys name managed to live on for another 10 years before disappearing from the American automotive scene ...

The White Motor Company, based in Cleveland, Ohio, was one of the leading truck manufacturers in the 1930s and a strong player in the industry right up until the end of the 1970s. The company started out, as many truck manufacturers did, building cars. From its earliest days, the company gained a reputation for quality craftsmanship: So much so that President William Howard Taft selected a White Model M seven-passenger touring car as the first official automobile of the president of the United States. By the 1930s, White was producing trucks exclusively and was a powerful enough player to eventually acquire competitors like Autocar, REO and Diamond T. Additionally, the company agree to sell Freightliners for Consolidated Freightways through its dealer network, and founded Western Star in the 1970s to sell trucks on the West Coast. By the late ‘70s, however, the company was in serious financial trouble. Ever-increasing production costs and a glut of brands to manufacture, market and sell (and incidentally competed against each other) brought the company to its knees. In 1980, Volvo bought the company’s assets and continued to ...