I was attracted to this ad for little-known Waukesha-Hesselman engines primarily because of the overloaded truck featured in the ad’s photograph. But when I sat down to research the company for this blog entry, I came away with surprisingly little information. (I did find someone on Ebay selling this exact same ad. But the winning bid was only $5.99 – clearly not worth ripping pages out of the CCJ archives we keep here at the office.) As it turns out, I was really researching two companies and one engine. Waukesha Engines were providing gasoline engines for a variety of applications, including heavy-duty trucking by the 1930s. The company is still doing business today as Waukesha-Dresser, specializing in large, stationary diesel engines. I had more luck when I researched the Hesselman engine. Oddly enough, a Hesselman was a spark-ignited diesel introduced in Sweden in 1925 by engineer Jonas Hesselman. Basically, the engine was spark-ignition engine, converted to run on heavier fuels such as oil, kerosene or diesel. Fuel was injected into the combustion chamber using an injection pump. Because of the engine’s low ...

Studebaker is one of those old automotive and trucking companies that everyone’s heard of, but few people know much about. But at one time, the company was as big an independent automaker as it was possible to find: selling cars and trucks around the globe. Studebaker traces its roots back to three brothers who emigrated from Germany in the mid 1700s. A couple of generations later found the family firmly entrenched in South Bend, Indiana as noted coach builders. The company was so well known for its quality products that President Benjamin Harrison ordered a full set of Studebaker coaches and harnesses for the White House when he began his presidency in 1889, Business was good until 1900, when company executives realized the advent of the motor car was poised to destroy their livelihood. Straight away, the company began building electric cars and, not long after, established a line of gasoline-powered automobiles. The company’s engineering philosophy was to “design for life,” resulting in cars and trucks noted for their exceptionally durable performance. The Depression proved to a mixed bag for Studebaker. The company ...

There were many major players in trucking in the 1930s, but International Harvester was clearly one of the industry’s leading manufacturers. The company made everything from heavy-duty tractors, vocational trucks to three different pickup models in 1936. By the ‘30s, International Harvester was also one of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world – right up there with Ford, General Motors, and U.S. Steel. The company traced its roots back to Cyrus McCormick patented his horse-drawn reaper in 1834. By the turn of the century, realizing the farmers and trucks went together like peas and carrots, IH began building its Auto Wagon line of gasoline-powered motor vehicles as a compliment to its core agricultural business. The company was wildly successful in the ag and trucking. Too much so, as it turned out. As time went on, the company began to grow, acquiring more rival companies and branching out into new industries and producing products that had – at best – only tenuous connections to IH’s core customer base, the American farmer. By the 1950s and ‘60s, IH was becoming dangerously bloated ...

It's strange to think back now and realize that as the 1930s dawned, Ford was in a rather precarious situation, Depression notwithstanding. Henry Ford built his fortune and his reputation on low-cost, sturdy cars and trucks for the masses. But by the late '20s, the company had stagnated. It didn't help that Ford produced the Model T for almost 20 years without any significant upgrades or enhancements. But he'd also steadily cut the price as production efficiencies increased. Over time, the outdated styling and technology worked against Ford. It's cars and trucks were seen as dependable, if not particularly desirable modes of transportation. Basically, you bought a Ford if you couldn't afford anything else to drive. By 1930, Ford had introduced the modern Model A - just in the nick of time. If Model T production had continued for another couple of years, Ford would have been in a dangerous position when the stock market crashed in 1929. But the Model A was a hit. So much so, that Ford was able to invest heavily in the design of a revolutionary ...

Historians often refer to the 1920-29 decade as the Roaring Twenties because of its wealth and excess. As with most industries, truck manufacturers and commercial haulers were thriving due to millions of miles of new roads and demand for faster freight distribution methods. All of the wealth and prosperity the industry had helped to create during the 1920s came crashing down in October, 1929, when the stock market went into free fall and ushered in the Great Depression. Judging by the comments from executives of truck manufacturers in a January, 1928, issue of CCJ, the possibility of a recession, let alone depression, was unfathomable : M.L. Pulcher, president of the Federal Motor Truck Co., said he "cannot see anything on the horizon that should, in any way, retard business to any great extent." In a similar vein, another executive was quoted as saying: "The great strength of the present situation, of course, lies deeper than the condition of any one industry. It is based, I believe, on the widest distribution of wealth that this country has ever known and upon the desire of our ...

In December, 1927, CCJ reported that a district manager for the Mack-International Motor Truck Co. in Philadelphia had found a way to provide employee benefits, such as paid time off and life insurance, without the dealership spending a dime. Albert L. Douglas created a separate corporation called a mutual aid association. This association administered the various benefits to the employees of the truck dealership. To belong to the mutual aid association, employees had to pay 10 cents per week. In return, they were entitled to a sick benefit of $1.00 per day and group life insurance paying a $1,000 death benefit. In addition to these regular benefits, the association gave presents when funds were available, such as a turkey to members in good standing at Christmastime. The association also supported a baseball team, and an eight-team bowling league with teams comprised of drivers, salespeople, technicians, office personnel, shop supervisors, etc. The association's income was supplemented by profits from an annual ball. Business affairs for the mutual aid association were administered by five directors who were elected annually by the members. "The operation of the mutual ...

It’s hard to imagine operating a vehicle without any oil filtration system. Technicians would be changing oil every hundred miles or so. According to a 1926 advertisement by Purolator in CCJ, 500-mile drain intervals were the only safe periods without using a filter. Compared to the alternative, purchasing an advanced oil filter that made it possible to drain the crankcase “only” every 2,000 to 3,000 miles must have seemed like a no-brainer at the time. The cost of the Purolator filter shown here was $50 for buses and trucks. At first glance, that may have seemed expensive to a fleet operator in 1926, considering that is approximately $616 in today’s currency. Yet what fleet owner today with 15,000-mile drain intervals wouldn't be willing to spend $616 to extend his drain intervals to 90,000 miles? It’s no wonder why the ad boldly declared: “You can have Purolator protection and economy at a very moderate cost, and save the ‘time out’ and the expense in repairs and overhauling, which dirty oil can and does inflict. See your local Purolator headquarters at once.”

The United Parcel Service has always been known for innovations in package handling, including its delivery equipment. The company acquired its first delivery car, a Model T Ford, in 1913. In 1926, the company introduced a new van for parcel delivery that bears a striking resemblance to thepresent fleet of delivery vehicles. In 1922, the United Parcel Service acquired a company in Los Angeles with an innovative practice at the time known as "common carrier" service, making it one of the few companies at the time to offer such a service. The service incorporated many of the features and operating principles of the company’s retail store delivery service with features not then offered by many other private carriers, or even the parcel post. According to the company’s official website, this common carrier service included automatic daily pickup calls, acceptance of checks made out to the shipper in payment of C.O.D.s, additional delivery attempts, automatic return of undeliverables, and streamlined documentation with weekly billing. “Perhaps the most key feature was that UPS was able to provide its extensive service at rates comparable to those of parcel ...

By 1921, the prevailing wisdom was that trucks were more cost effective than horse teams, especially for hauling heavy loads like materials for road construction. Highway superintendents busying themselves with roadwork completion needn't bother keeping an accurate account of their expenses. Compared to yesteryear, they were satisfied trucks were saving time and money and that was that. Just in case there was still any doubters, in October, 1921, CCJ published an interview with one road superintendent, William Tonkel of Allen County, Ft. Wayne, Ind., who opened up his books to prove, once and for all, that trucks saved time and money. To maintain and repair roads, Allen County utilized trucks that carried 4 yards of crushed stone weighing about 5 tons per load. For one particular 10-mile section of road repair, the county had stone delivered to Ft. Wayne in freight cars. The stone was loaded onto trucks that hauled it to the repair site where it was dispersed using the trucks’ dump bodies. Trucks were able to make 4 trips per day from the freight cars to the job site. At four ...

In May, 1929, the airplane division of the Packard Motor Company unveiled the first diesel-powered aircraft. To the aviation industry, a maiden flight between Detroit and Langley Field, Va., proved that diesel engines could significantly lower fuel costs and fire hazards because the engines did not use electric ignition systems, which were also known to interfere with radio reception. This news prompted the editors of CCJ to inquire about using diesel engines in commercial transport. In the November, 1929, issue, editors interviewed engineers at the major vehicle and engine manufactures. No engineer was willing to publicly announce plans to market a diesel-powered vehicle, but they all admitted to having done extensive testing and evaluation of the technology. At the time, fuel oil for diesel engines was limited, the engines weighed more, and the technology for high-speed diesel engines was not ready for prime time. Engineers acknowledged that compared to gasoline, a diesel engine was more fuel efficient for pulling heavy loads at slow speeds. Yet this fact hardly mattered to fleet operators who were willing to forego fuel savings of diesel power to ...

In early 1929, the Commercial Car Journal published an article by Lloyd G. Wilson, professor of commerce and transportation at the University of Pennsylvania, which described the pivotal role of trucking in the transformation of American business from the Age of Production to the even greater Age of Distribution. The Age of Production was manifest by companies using mass production to increase economies of scale. In the new age, however, buyers expected local merchants to carry a greater variety of goods. To this end, merchants looked to their distributors for help in lowering their cost of inventory and increasing the variety of goods they stocked. Overall, the Age of Distribution was marked by increased demand for low-cost, high speed distribution strategies to get smaller quantities of goods to more locations. “Rapid production, high pressure distribution and hand-to-mouth buying and rapid transportation are inseparable elements in modern business,” the article said. In sum, the distribution of goods had become just as essential as the manufacturing of goods in the new American economy, and the article noted how trucking terminals and faster equipment had enabled businesses ...

In August, 1922, a nationwide strike by union railroad shop workers led to a complete shut down of the passenger rail system in Chicago. With three million residents, the city depended on the operation of its street cars and elevated rail lines to function — at least that’s what the union must have thought. The strike was a sudden business opportunity for bus and commercial trucks, which quickly jumped into action to move the city’s three million residents and an estimated one million passengers to and from the city’s business district every day. “There was hardly a commercial motor truck in the city that didn’t at some time haul its quota of workers to or from their business district or transport them through the outlying sections,” the Commercial Car Journal reported. “The experience should prove of immense value to the manufacturers of motor buses and commercial haulers. It furnished the first great example of what may be done with complete motor equipment in handling the entire surface transportation of a great city, and doubters may no longer say: ‘It can’t be done.’”