The Army says it’s made ‘significant improvements’ to its troubled new infantry squad vehicle

1930s Chevrolet

Recently spotted in the wild, a nice 1930s vintage (or maybe 40, 41?) Chevrolet pickup truck.

Studebaker

 

One of the old ones, still being used.

Studebaker pickup truck from the early 1960s.  Actually being used by a fisherman, much as it was originally intended to be.

Unimog

I don't know the vintage of this Unimog, which is another photo I originally posted elsewhere, but its a nice example of one.

The Mercedes Unimog is a great truck, one of the all-time classic trucks, really. Somewhat analogous to the Dodge Power Wagon, it was originally intended as a post World War Two farm truck designed to allow German farmers to have one vehicle that could do anything, from plowing to taking crops to market.  It's arguably the greatest series of 4x4s every made.  They've seen widespread military and industrial use.

Mercedes Unimog truck.

Prewar Ford Pickup Truck.

 Also posted elsewhere, a prewar Ford pickup.

Prewar Ford

Ford pickup truck.  I'm not sure of the age, but no newer than 1940 anyway.  The details indicate that it is a V8.  This appears to be an unrestored original.  Nice truck.

Chevrolet Panel Truck

 Posted elsewhere some time ago, a beautifully restored Chevrolet panel truck.

Chevrolet Panel Truck

An exceptional example of a restored Chevrolet panel truck circa late 40s early 50s.

Lex Anteinternet: Beauty: Function or Form?

Lex Anteinternet: Beauty: Function or Form?: 

Beauty: Function or Form?

Heavily rusted mid 1970s Chevrolet pickup truck, with Colorado classic vehicle plate and rough trailer, but lifted and with good tires, on Homer Spit, Alaska.

Lex Anteinternet: The Rise and Decline of the "SUV".

Lex Anteinternet: The Rise and Decline of the "SUV".:  

The Rise and Decline of the "SUV".

 Some time ago, on this transportation obsessed blog, I published this item:

Lex Anteinternet: SUVs before SUVs: 

A 1962 Dodge Power Giant Carryall.  Not mine, I saw it for sale the other day while driving through town.  It appears in nice shape, and still features bias ply tires.  This is a D100 Carryall, which means its rated at 1/2 ton, although it has a two speed rear axle.  Of course, I don't know anything about it or what is, or isn't original.  It looks pretty original, however.

Anyhow, it's interesting how SUVs are supposed to be a modern concept, with the Chevrolet Suburban supposedly sort of ushering them in. But Suburban's themselves go way back, and before them were vehicles like this Dodge Carryall.  Carryalls, in fact, go all the way back to World War Two.

Of course, these aren't easy to drive.  It has a manual transmission and armstrong steering.  And, of course, conventional hydraulic brakes.  Not something a soccer mom, or dad, would probably drive.  Still, it's interesting to note how far back the concept of a full sized 4x4, built on a truck frame, goes.  About as far back as 4x4 trucks themselves.

Since that time, I posted a comment on trucks or SUVs on the M K Wright blog, and Jenny, who has a couple of excellent blogs herself, including the 1870-1918 blog, noted that she'd be interested on how SUVS became the sort of bloated light duty vehicles that they've become. To a fan of 4x4s, which I obviously am, that question struck a chord and so I'm back on the topic.

I guess to start off on this, we'd have to define what an SUV actually is. The term isn't really that old in comparison to the vehicles that arguable fit the definition.  SUV, as we know, stands for Sport Utility  Vehicle.  But what's that?

It's a bit hard to say. When the term first was used, it seemed to fit any 4x4 that was a light carryall, but over time it expanded to include all the traditional carryalls and perhaps even things like Jeeps. So, here we'll take a look at that class of vehicle, that being the 4x4 that isn't a pickup, but is designed to carry multiple passengers.

 

M151A1 Jeep in the foreground, with self propelled artillery in the background, South Korea, 1987.  The M151 was the last of the US military Jeeps.  Today, the Jeep is basically almost back to a single manufacturer after having had as wider run at one time.

If we look at it that way, I suppose the Jeep, which we've discussed here before several times.  Probably the last time I looked at them at length was in this post:

Jeep

I've owned Jeeps twice.

 

My first car, a 1958 M38A1 Army Jeep.  In the words of Iris Dement, "it turned over once, but never went far."*

My very first vehicle was a Jeep.  I bought it for $500 with money I had earned from a summer job.  I was 15 at the time, and not old enough to actually drive, but I still had it when I turned 16.  

The engine was a mess, in need of rebuilding or replacement, and as you can see, the prior owner had hit a tree with it.  As the engine was so worn out, it burned nearly as much oil as gasoline, and I sold it when I was 16 and bought a Ford F100 to replace it.

My second Jeep was a 1946 CJ2A, the very first model of civilian Jeep.  I kept it for awhile, but ultimately when my son was small, I sold it too.  The CJ2A, particularly ones made in the first couple of years of production, was nearly unchanged from the World War Two Army 1/4 ton truck that gave rise to the species, and indeed, the model I had, had some parts commonality otherwise unique to the Army Jeeps of the Second World War.

Depiction of Jeep in use on Guadalcanal, bringing in a KIA.

Jeeps got their start in that role, as a military vehicle, a 1/4 ton truck, entering service just prior to World War Two.  Bantam, a now extinct motor vehicle manufacturer, gets a lot of credit for the basic design, and indeed the Bantam Jeep did enter U.S. and British service.

Bantam Jeep being serviced by Army mechanic. The Bantam was actually lighter than the Willys Jeep.

But it was Willys, with larger manufacturing capacity, that really gets credit for the design.  It was their design that became the Jeep, although Ford made a huge number of Jeeps during the Second World War as well.

Coast Guard patrol with Jeep.  The Coast Guard also had mounted patrols during the Second World War, acquiring horses and tack from the Army.

American and Australian troops with Jeep serving as a field ambulance.

Jeeps became synonymous with U.S. troops during World War Two.  Indeed, there's a story, probably just a fable, of a French sentry shooting a party of Germans who tried to pass themselves off as Americans, simply because the sentry knew that a walking party of men could not be Americans, they "came in Jeeps."  A story, probably, but one that reflected how common Jeeps were and how much they were admired by U.S. forces at the time.  It's commonly claimed by some that Jeeps replaced the horse in the U.S. Army, but that's only slightly true, and only in a very limited sense.  It might be more accurate to say that the Jeep replaced the mule and the horse in a limited role, but it was really the American 6x6 truck that did the heavy lifting of the war, and which was truly a revolutionary weapon.  

None the less, the fame of the Jeep was won, and after the war Jeeps went right into civilian production.  For a time, Willys was confused over what the market would be for the little (uncomfortable) car, and marketed to farmers and rural workers, who never really saw the utility of the vehicle over other options.  Indeed, for farmers and ranchers who needed a 4x4, it was really the Dodge Power Wagon that took off.  The market for Jeeps was with civilian outdoorsmen, who rapidly adopted it in spite of the fact that it's very small, quite uncomfortable, and actually, in its original form, a very dangerous vehicle prone to rolling.  Still, the light truck's 4x4 utility allowed sportsmen to go places all year around that earlier civilian cars and trucks simply did not. The back country, and certain seasons of the year, were suddenly opened up to them.  For that reason, Jeeps were an integral part of the Revolution In Rural Transportation we've otherwise written about.  You can't really keep a horse and a pack mule in your backyard in town, but you can keep a Jeep out on the driveway.

Not surprisingly, Willys (and its successor in the line, Kaiser) soon had a lot of competition in the field.  The British entered it nearly immediately with the Land Rover, a light 4x4 designed for the British army originally that's gone on to have a cult following, in spite of being expensive and, at least early on, prone to the faults of British vehicles.  Nissan entered the field with the Nissan Patrol, a vehicle featuring the British boxiness but already demonstrating the fine traits that Japanese vehicles would come to be known for. Toyota entered the field with its legendary Land Cruiser, the stretched version of which I once owned one of, and which was an absolutely great 4x4.  Indeed, their smaller Jeep sized vehicle, in my opinion, was the best in this vehicle class.   Ford even entered the field with the original Bronco.  Over time, even Suzuki would introduce its diminutive Samurai.

So, what's happened here to this class of vehicles anyway?

Recently, for reason that are hard to discern, I decided to start looking once again for a vehicle in this class.  I know their defects.  They are unstable compared to trucks, and they don't carry much either.  But there is something about them.  Last time I looked around there were a lot of options, and costs were reasonable for a used one. Well, not anymore.

I don't know if its the urbanized SUV that's taken over everything.  But whereas once a fellow looking for a Jeep like vehicle could look for Jeeps, Land Cruisers, Land Rovers, Samurais, Broncos and International Scouts, now you are down to Jeeps, the Toyota FJ Cruiser or the soon to be extinct Land Rover Defender.  The Defender is insanely expensive, but the Jeep and Cruiser sure aren't cheap.  Even used vehicles in this class now command a crazy price.  I'm actually amazed I see so many around, given that most people don't use them for what they are designed for, and they're so darned expensive.

The Jeep  was the first of the SUVs, although only barely so.  The Jeep came about just prior to World War Two, as the U.S. Army, which had quite a bit of experience all read with front and rear axle drive vehicles, sought to have a really light car, or truck developed for military use. Being light weight was a requirement for the vehicle, as was it being four wheel drive, a revolutionary requirement at the time.  Jeeps were the result, with there being two Jeeps to see U.S. service during the war, the Bantam Jeep and the Willys type Jeep, which was also made by Ford.  The Willys type Jeep was made in much larger numbers.  By the wars end, the Soviet Union was making its own version of the Jeep, based on the Willys and Bantam examples they'd acquired via Lend Lease.  The Germans, who loved all things mechanical, had also experimented with light weight 4x4s after being exposed to the Jeep, and came up with 4x4s based on the Kubelwagen. The Germans, however, never made the full switch to 4x4s so their examples are much less common that their 2x4 vehicles.

Civilian Jeep fans would tend to identify this as a CJ5, but it's actually a M38A1, in service with the South Korean Army in 1987.

I've addressed at length before, but Jeeps have had a long run as a popular civilian 4x4, and have actually outlasted their use by Americans in the civilian role, the Army no longer using Jeeps at all.  Those armies that do use a Jeep like vehicle today, use Toyota, Land, Steyr or Mercedes trucks, not American ones.  But the Jeep lives on as an American 4x4, but only made by Jeep.  A small close cousin, but much lighter, does exists in the form of the Suzuiki Samauri and the General Motors equivalent of it, but that vehicle seems to be an example of what generally seems to have occurred here.  Starting out a sub Bantam type Jeep, but made for the outdoors, it's evolved into a little 4x4 car.  As we'll see, that seems to have been the general trend.

The Jeep wasn't the only 4x4 passenger vehilce (ie., I'm omitting trucks) introduced by the military during World War Two.  Just as the Army sought to introduce 4x4 trucks and the Jeep, it also introduced, during the war, a class of vehicles we'd later know as Travelalls or Carryalls, and which like the Jeep, we find that there was explosion of types, but that we're now down to a singular example.

I've posted an example of a Dodge Carryall above, so we know what the type is, but we can probably define it as a 4x4 panel truck with seating.  Indeed, the first vehicles to carry that name were in fact 4x2 panel trucks.  Just before the Second World War, however, the Army decided to introduce a Dodge variant of the panel truck for passengers, just as Dodge was also producing a 4x4 heavy duty pickup truck for the Army. And, in addition to that, Dodge also introduced a vehicle called a "command car" that went under a variety of WC designations.

We'll take a quick look at two of these vehicles, before going on to the third, as it's interesting how Detroit sort of missed the boat on these early on, although that's true of nearly all of the early 4x4 vehicles.  Truth be known, they just didn't see much of a post war use for any of them.

 

One of the WC Command Cars

Command cars were a Dodge product based on at first the 1/2 ton Dodge military pickup chassis, and later the 3/4 ton chassis. They were a great vehicle, and were very popular with the service at the time.  Sometimes called a "weapons carrier", they were basically the first true SUV.  Senior officers with access to them, such as George Patton, frequently used them rather than the Jeep, as they were just big enough to be a bit more useful, and small enough to remain really maneuverable.  When we see the later SUVs of the 80s and 90s, we're really seeing something that's pretty darned close to these, conceptually.  Oddly, however, not only did the automobile manufacturers basically fail to appreciate that there's be a post war market for them, the Army phased them out after the war in favor of the Jeep, which isn't quite as useful.

Dodge 4x4 military ambulance, essentially a panel truck.

Also based on the Dodge truck frame was the Dodge military ambulance. This vehicle was hugely successful and a nearly identical model was put into production after the war when the Army adopted the M35, an updated version of the World War Two 3/4 ton Dodge military truck.  Again, however, this didn't seem to inspire the manufacturers to produce a civilian model, and perhaps that's understandable as these were, after all, military ambulances. They did find some favor with civilian users, however, post war as a surplus rugged panel truck.  Here two, however, we can see something that would come back into favor later in another form.

Dodge military carreyalls.

Dodge also produced true carryalls for the Army during the war, and it's hear that we really see the beginnings of something that would find widespread post war use.  The least significant of Dodge's wartime vehicles, it's almost hard t find a picture of them actually being used overseas.  But they set a pattern, along with the Dodge 4x4 truck, that would soon find expression in post war vehicles.

Wartime manufacture.

After the Second World War, Dodge kept its military truck in production, in a civilian variant, as the Power Wagon, vending the heavy 4x4 to commercial and agricultural customers as being "job rated".  Willys kept the Jeep in production as well, struggling to vend it to a market it didn't quite understand.  Soon, sportsmen proved to be the market for Jeeps, while Power Wagons were bought by the anticipated market.  Nobody kept a 4x4 panel truck in manufacture except for Willys, which alone made one in this class, based on its small frame 4x4 pickup truck.  This vehicle, termed by Willys a "station wagon", also very much anticipated the later size of common SUVs, although the car, nicknamed the "rumble wagon", was very much a truck.

In 1954, however that suddenly changed.  Dodge came back out with the vehicle depicted above, the Town Wagon.  But they were late by a year. The prior year, International Harvester, the heavy truck and implement company, came in with the Travelall, a vehicle built on the same concept.  Chevrolet was already making its panel truck, the Suburban, but in 1957 it entered the 4x4 market with the panel truck as well.  As odd as it may be to think of the "family truckster" starting off as a fairly heavy 4x4, they all were.

So, by the late 1950s three American manufacturers were making heavy 4x4 panel trucks for passenger use.  The Carryall, the Travelall and the Suburban all vied for the same, fairly off road, passenger market. A fourth, the Jeep, was a smaller vehicle nearly alone in its class. None of these vehicles was  the plush type vehicle that the Suburban is today, but they are all recognizable as being in that class.  

That class took a new turn in 1963 when Jeep took a huge leap and abandoned its station wagon in favor of a luxury carryall, that vehicle being the Jeep Wagoneer.  There was nothing really like it.  Dumping all pretensions of commercial use, the Wagoneer was the luxury vehicle in the suburban or carryall class, and it did really well. While Jeep vehicles, save for the Jeep itself, have been somewhat forgotten as being pioneering, this one clearly was. 

Just a few years thereafter Chevrolet ramped up the competition by taking it in another direction, when it introduced the Blazer.  Based on a half ton, short box, pickup truck frame, the Blazer took the carryall one notch down in size, marketing its vehicle to the smaller family size now emerging in the US and the weekend sportsman. The Blazer was a huge success.

1972 Chevrolet Blazer.  This type of Blazer (without the lifted suspension and large wheels) was the first model of the popular 1/2 ton SUV.

The Blazer was such a successful vehicle that soon there were others in its class.  Ford, which had a contender in the Jeep market which was very much loved, the Bronco, dumped it in favor of a larger Blazer sized vehicle, still called the Bronco. Dodge, which of course had a military vehicle in this class as long ago as 1940, came back out with one based on its 1/2 ton short box pickup frame, calling it the Ram Charger.  By the early 1980s, Ford, Chevrolet and Chrysler were all competing in this class, and International and Chevrolet were still competing in the carryall class, Dodge having dropped out.

In the meantime, other manufacturers had not been idle.  Toyota had come out with a stretched Land Cruiser, and entered the field, by the 1960s.  Land Cruiser had as well, but it's temperamental expensive 4x4 was never really popular in the US, so that variant was rarely seen.  International Harvester, which had competed in the Jeep class with its Scout, came out with a new larger variant of the Scout which also competed in this smaller, but not Jeep sized, class.  Jeep itself would attempt to enter it from time to time, but was never successful in really figuring it out.

 
 Chevrolet Blazer in use by the U.S. Army, in this case the 3d Bn, 49th FA, Wyoming Army National Guard, in South Korea.  It's odd to think that this class of vehicle, which basically started off as a military vehicle, had a return, albeit a not too successful one, to military service.

By the late 1980s, this latter class, the smaller, but not 1/4 ton, 4x4 market really took off.  Nissan entered the class with its rugged Pathfinder.  Toyota, already in the class, came out with an additional vehicle in it called the Four Runner.  Mazda entered it as well.  Seeing what was going on, Chevrolet abandoned its trailblazing full size Blazer in favor of a smaller model in this class, also called the Blazer.

And then, something happened.

Somehow these vehicles quite being what they were, which was offroad vehicles, and simply became panel trucks, with 4x4, once again.

How it happened isn't clear, but whole class of rugged personal 4x4s began to evaporate.  The Bronco disappeared.  International quit making personal vehicles.  And the small SUVs increasingly became large 4x4 cars, but not really trucks.  

Some of these vehicles are still around in one form or another, but only some.  The Jeep class is principally occupied by Jeep, unless a person is so well off they can afford a Mercedes or Land Rover.  The mid sized SUV still sees a rugged Toyota class vehicles, and Jeep has finally figured it out, virtually dominating the field now with its four door Jeep.  General Motors still makes a Suburban class vehicle and a Blazer sized vehicle, but both vehicles now are nearly luxury vehicles, not the field vehicles they once were, although they can still do the back country and come with off road options.

People will buy, of course, what they want.So the manufacturers can't be blamed for producing what they do. But the evolution is an interesting one.

Lex Anteinternet: Toyota Landcruiser: The Prime Mover of the Third World Military.

Lex Anteinternet: Toyota Landcruiser: The Prime Mover of the Third ...:      

Toyota Landcruiser: The Prime Mover of the Third World Military.

 Moroccan troops with some sort of Toyota, United States Marine Corps photograph.

Americans may have invented the  Jeep, but based on what you see in the news, the Japanese surely perfected the type.  The Toyota Land Cruiser of the FJ type is surely the prime mover of the third world and irregular military.   This past week, I saw news footage of a fairly  new pattern of Toyota Landcruiser (or whatever they're calling them now) that had been fitted out with a rocket launcher, being used in Iraq, by the Iraqi army.

Whatever that pattern is, they don't import it here.  Universal (i.e., light small 4x4 trucks of the Jeep type) have gone from being a product offered solely by Willy, to being one, as I've noted before, that was offered by many manufacturers, to include Toyota, Rover, Nissan, and Ford, amongst others.  Now the numbers have dwindled back down so that the only common one is the Jeep once again, now a Chrysler product, unless you include Toyota's somewhat larger option.  Mercedes does make a Jeep type vehicle that's imported into the US, but you rarely see one.  And I know at least Steyr makes one overseas.  Jaguar, the current owner of the Rover brand, might as well.

No matter, it's Toyota that has the light military vehicle role all sewn up all over the glove.  Every third world army everywhere, and every mobilized irregular guerrilla outfit, uses them too.  They must be a fantastic light truck.  While I know it'd be very politically incorrect, were I in the Toyota advertising department, I'd propose the slogan "Toyota Landcruiser:  The prime mover of the third world army".

Lex Anteinternet: Automotive Transportation I: Trucks and Lorries

Lex Anteinternet: Automotive Transportation I: Trucks and Lorries: 

Automotive Transportation I: Trucks and Lorries

Truck Train, May 1920.

We have, in this continuing series on transportation, looked at trains, planes, ships, and shoe leather.  We're going to start looking at the type of transportation now that's just part of the regular background of our lives, for most of us.  Automobiles.

In doing this, I've broken the topic up into two, and perhaps oddly, I've started with trucks and lorries.  That probably seems backwards, but for what we're doing it really isn't. Transportation by truck has been a major change in the basic distribution system for the nation.

First of all, we probably better get some basic definitions down.  I've used, in the caption to this entry, terms that are somewhat unique to differently localities.  A "truck" is to Americans and Canadians what a "lorry" is to the English.  I don't know why, but they are.  And that's sort of illustrative of what we're trying to address here, which is the commercial vehicle.  A unique hauling vehicle designed to move objects and operated by people, rather than an automobile designed to haul principally people.  We'll get to cars, or sedans, later.

Trucks are as old as the internal combustion engine, which itself dates to basically the second half of the 19th Century. The history of the internal combustion engine is surprisingly convoluted and long, and there are different early engines that could compete for the claim of being the very first such engine. Suffice it to say, for our purposes, the introduction of the internal combustion engine had its way paved by a different type of engine, really, that being the steam engine. And in fact, the steam engine, along with electric motors, competed with early internal combustion engines for the role of individual vehicle power plant for quite some time.  As early as the 1870s, at any rate, such familiar names as Benz and Daimler were introducing internal combustion engines that would be recognizable as ancestors to the current ones.  Rudolph Diesel had designed the early variants of the engine that bears his name by 1893.  Even such theoretically advanced engine features such as the supercharger were 19th Century inventions.

So the early engines were around in the late 19th Century, but what it took to really get the vehicles up and rolling, so to speak as viable alternatives to horse and locomotive was cheap fuel, which oddly enough is rapidly reaching the pinnacle of its cheapness in our very own era.  And that took petroleum exploration.  As this isn't a history of petroleum exploration, we'll forgo looking into that in this thread.  Perhaps we'll look at it at some time in the future.  What it also took, however, was an affordable set of vehicles.

Trucks came in, therefore, quite early, but as practical machines they really began to make their appearance felt just prior to World War One.  By that time, there were some really stout industrial trucks chugging around, and that's basically what they were doing, around American cities.  They were the competitor to draft horses pulling wagons and carts.

They did not all operate exactly the same way that modern trucks do. Some did, with engine and transmission, but others were chain driven, like motorcycles were (and some still are).  But as heavy as they were, they tended to be pretty prone to maintenance problems and they were, in some ways, more comparable to industrial machines than to the modern trucks we have today.

They also didn't stray much into the sticks. They didn't have the range for it, and they were too expensive for many rural users.  Nonetheless, they began to come into military use just prior to World War One.  The U.S. First Aero Squadron was the first fully motorized unit of the U.S. Army and saw deployment in the Punitive Expedition, where its trucks proved as great of value, if not greater, than its aircraft.

U.S. Army Truck Company 28.  Punitive Expedition.

Trucks went on to see widespread use by every army during the Great War and while they did not displace the horse in any role, they were basically proven by the end of the war.  This was so much the case that the United States Army, as part of a grand experiment, ordered a convoy of various types of trucks and vehicles then its possession to cross the United States in 1919, just one year after the conclusion of the war.

 British brewery truck, an early example of a truck directly replacing a role generally filled by horses, in use here to haul cannon parts.

 Light trucks in use by the U.S. Army, World War One.

That convoy proved to be an epic ordeal, which served as much as anything to demonstrate that American roads were really all local, and in some cases nearly impassable, affairs.  But the fact that the trucks did make it proved a point, and it wasn't all that long thereafter when a true interstate  highway system was put into the works.  Indeed, the it already was as Congress had first entered the picture legislatively in 1916, with the Federal Road Aid Act of 1916.  In 1921 Congress passed a new act, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 which provided matching funds for highway construction and acted to have the Army target highways that were vital to national defense.  Therefore, contrary to the general supposition that this first occurred under the Eisenhower Administration, in fact the Army became involved in highway construction, in a fashion, in 1921.  In 1922 the Army had identified 20,000 miles of road that it considered vital.

Road construction boomed in the 1920s, and by the 1930s thousands of miles of paved, or concrete, roads had been put in and the road age had really arrived.  Many of the old dirt public roads, which could really only serve local purposes, and which took hours of travel in order to go even modest distances, were replaced with paved roads that greatly increased the speed of travel.  Small stores and gas stations, in turn, popped up everywhere, as vehicles of the era really only  held a modest amount of gasoline.  With the increase in roads everywhere, an increase in truck traffic came in as well.
 

Fairly typical commercial trucks, 1940.

At first, and for a very long time, most truck traffic really remained only local.  However, even by the 1930s tractor trailers had become relatively common, having made their appearance some time before. So the beginning of longer hauls were there.  These trucks were somewhat modest in size compared to the ones we see now, but they were there and they were used, although more often for intrastate hauls or relatively short hauls, by modern standards.

 

Tractor trailer combinations, 1930.

 Trucks delivering tucks, 1931.

At the same time, the pickup truck very much made its appearance.  At first most pickups were converted cars, with conversions of Model Ts being quite common. But as the type proved so utilitarian soon major automobile manufacturers began to offer them, and they became a staple for small businesses, farms and ranches.  All were two wheel drive at this point.

 Very early example of a truck that would come to be thought of as the pickup truck.

 Pickup truck in farm use, 1930s.

Truck and trailer, late 1930s.

None of which is to say or suggest that trucks supplanted horse and mule drawn wagons by this point. They were starting too, quite clearly, but horse and mules remained very much in evidence the entire time.

Also contrary to widely held belief, the post Great War period, followed by the Twenties and the Great Depression did not see the  Army supplant horses entirely by any means, but it did see the artillery branch, specifically the field artillery, take a huge interest in trucks.

Various nations artillery branches has started to use trucks as "artillery tractors" during World War One, with every major army using some. The heavier the piece, the more likely that an army was using an artillery tractor to tow it.  Following World War One, the U.S. Army in particular had an enormous interest in trucks.  Indeed, the artillery was arguably more interested in trucks than any other branch of the Army.

What the artillery branch found was that there really weren't any artillery tractors of the type that it wanted, and that it new could be built.  Available trucks, for the most part, were two axle, two wheel drive, low geared trucks.  All wheel drive trucks did start coming in during this period, but they were very heavy indeed, and mostly used for very rugged rural enterprises, such as logging. The artillery wanted a truck that was all wheel drive, but still capable of effective road use. As there wasn't such a vehicle, it set out inventing one.

And it was successful, which oddly put the Federal government, for awhile, in the truck manufacturing business.  While these 6x6 artillery tractors proved to be immediately successful, they also proved to be very expensive, and in a nation with such a massive automobile industry, it soon came to be the case that nobody could see a really good reason why the Federal government should be operating a truck company, so this line of truck, during the 1930s, was contracted out as a type to various civilian manufacturers.

 

Marines riding in heavy 4x4 truck early in World War Two. This type would soon be supplanted by 6x6 trucks.

Right about the same time, the Army, having seen the utility of 6x6 trucks, began to desire 4x4 trucks as well, and these were also contracted for.   Just prior to the United States entering World War Two the Army had adopted and was purchasing, therefore, a wide range of all wheel drive trucks, ranging from the newly adopted and very small 1/4 ton truck, the Jeep, to 4x4s and 6x6s.  Other armies were likewise experimenting with fall wheel drive vehicles but no other nation did to the same extent as the U.S, which by the wars end was at any rate supplying at least some trucks to every Allied army.

 

World War Two era Dodge 4x4 truck.  With very little in the way of change, this model would go into civilian production immediately after World War Two.

Four wheel drive trucks brought about a revolution in transportation in rural quarters that has already been addressed by this blog, so we won't go back into it, other than that to say after World War Two every major U.S. automobile manufacturer, and there were more major ones at that time, had experience in building 4x4s.  And as they were offered to civilians, they slowly came to be a major automobile type were today, they are very common.  In my region of the country it's so rare as to see a 2x4 pickup truck that its actually a bit surprising now when a newer one is encountered.  They aren't something you see much, and most automobile lots have only 4x4s for sale here, as a rule.  This hasn't always been the case, but it certainly is the case now.

Following the Second World War the U.S. saw a rising expansion of over the road trucking.  By the late 1950s the US was, additionally, overhauling its Interstate highway system via the Defense Department's budget with new "defense" highways, which were much improved compared to the old Interstate highway system.  With the greatly improved roads, by the 1960s, interstate long haul trucking was in an advance state of supplanting the railroads for a lot of American freighting.  At the same time, the diesel engine supplanted the gasoline engine for semi tractors.  A very uncommon engine for motor vehicles in the United States prior to the 1950s, diesels started coming in somewhere in that period and by the 1960s they'd completely replaced gasoline engines for over the road semi tractors.  Now, of course, diesels have become fairly common for heavy pickups as well, and are even starting to appear in the U.S. in light pickup trucks in spite of the higher cost of diesel fuel.

 

 Mack tractor, 1942.

The change was dramatic, although few people can probably fully appreciate that now, as we are so acclimated to trucking.  Thousands of trucks supplanted thousands of rail cars, and entire industries that were once served only by rail came to be served by truck.  The shipping of livestock, for example, which was nearly exclusively a railroad enterprise up into the 1950s is now done entirely by truck, a change which had remarkable impacts as rail shipping required driving the livestock to the railhead, whereas with the trucks they are simply scheduled to arrive at a ranch at a particular time.  Likewise, businesses that at one time located themselves near rail lines, so that they could receive their heavy products by rail, no longer do, as they receive those items by trucks.  For example, pipeyards, once always near a railhead, are not always today.

Not that the railroads have disappeared.  Indeed, in recent years they've once again been expanding, as they're very cost efficient and even more "green" than trucking, as they point out.  But trucks have, in the past 60 years, gone from something that was really for short hauls, for the most part, to something that is now common for long hauls, and indeed the bulk of American shipping is now done by truck.  Trucks have an advantage in being able to go more selectively and directly from "port to port", and the surface on which they travel is of course, put in by the public, making it a partially subsidized industry.  So they aren't going away soon, in spite of a revitalized rail industry.

And trucks have became part of the American vehicular fleet in a way that would have been hardly imaginable even 50 years ago.  As they've become more comfortable to drive, and easier to drive, they've been a common family vehicle, which is not what they once were.  Pickup trucks used to be pretty much only owned by people who had some need of them, even if that need was recreational.  Now, they're common everywhere.  Indeed, the Ford F150, Ford's 1/2 ton pickup truck, has been the best selling vehicle, that's vehicle, not truck, for the past 32 years.  So, so common have trucks become in the United States that one model of 1/2 tone truck is the number one single high selling model of vehicle.  Pretty amazing for a vehicle that started off as utilitarian and industrial.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, May 14, 1943. Victory Speed.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, May 14, 1943. The sinking of the AHS Cent...: 

Friday, May 14, 1943.  

The United States Public Roads Administration reported that only a few states were observing the 35 mph wartime highway "Victory Speed Limit" imposed by the Federal Government.

35mph is slow, but not quite as slow as it would now be regarded.  Most cars were lower geared than they presently are, and pickup trucks were very much so.  Many state highways were narrow single lane highways at the time.

Lex Anteinternet: The Moving Picture: Delivery truck and wagons. 1917

Lex Anteinternet: The Moving Picture: Delivery truck and wagons. 1917

The Moving Picture: Delivery truck and wagons. 1917

What's this blog about?

Oh no, Yeoman, not another blog.

Well, yes.

This one is dedicated to trucks, more specifically work trucks.

I've always had a thing for trucks.  And by that I mean real trucks. Not the cards masquerading as trucks that are so common today.

I'm sure I picked this up as a kid.

My father always had a truck.  Indeed, he always had a truck when most men of his occupation had cars, and perhaps a truck at home (most did).  Most men who did what my father did, and at the time he did it they were all men, drove a car to work day by day.  Not my father.  He drove a truck.

One of my cousins with my father's 1956 Chevrolet pickup truck.

I don't think my father ever actually owned a car of his own, although he co-owned there with my mother after they were married.  Before my grandfather died in the late 1940s, and my father worked as a teenager at the company packing house, my father drove a packing house sedan that had been converted into a truck.  It was a 1949 Chevrolet Sedan that had the bonnet removed from the truck, and a box installed.

If that doesn't sound like a truck, rest assured it is. The suspensions on late 40s and early 50s sedans were pretty truck like.  I myself had a 1954 Chevrolet Sedan for many years, and I drove it fishing fairly routinely, just like you would a truck.  I've owned two other cars since then, and I'd certainly not do that with them.

He had the 1949 prior to going into the Air Force and when he came back out, he bought the truck depicted above, the only new one he ever owned.  He had that until some point in the 1960s.  I'm told that I cried when he traded it in.

At that time, he acquired a 1965 Chevrolet Camper Special, which oddly enough was a half ton.  I recall it well.  A stick shift, light green truck with a white tonneau tarp, he had it for many years.  I learned how to drive on it.  Indeed, when I was old enough to test for my license at age 16, he had only just recently replaced it with a 1972 GMC.  I can recall this as I had a hard time with the driving test as I took it on my parent's 1973 Mercury Comet, which I later owned.  It was an automatic and I kept going to shift during the test, something which was emphasized by the fact that I was nervous.

I already owned a type of truck at that time, that being what the Army called a 1/4 ton utility truck or vehicle. I.e., a Jeep.  Mine was a 1958 M38A1, my first vehicle.

In buying it, I acquired a 4x4, something my father had never owned.  Unfortunately for me, or maybe fortunately, the engine was shot when I got it, so like the first car in the ballad Our Town, it didn't go far.  It established a precedence, however.  I've never been without a 4x4 since, and I've owned two more Jeeps, one of which I currently drive almost every day.

The 58 M38A1 was ultimately replaced by a 1974 F100 4x4 pickup, a light half ton. It's amazing to think that the 74 was "old" when I got it, as couldn't have been more than six or so years old in reality.  It was well-used however, and I only drove it for a year or so before I traded it in, myself, for a Dodge D150, the first great truck I ever owned.

Also, a 1974, it was, as Dodge used to advertise, "job ready".  Suspended more like a modern 3/4 ton, it was rough riding and tough as nails.  I drove it well into college, even though by that time I already had a second truck, a 1962 Dodge W300.  Ultimately, I sold it to my father, it becoming the only 4x4 truck he ever owned.  He drove it until it died, and truth be known, he didn't live much longer after that.  It's odd to think that he was younger than I am now when he bought it from me, and used it until both he and it really could go no further.

As you can probably tell, I've owned a lot of trucks over the years.  If you stick to just pickup trucks, I've owned seven of them, of which four were half tons and the remainder one tons (or heavier).  All have been 4x4s.  If you include Jeeps as little trucks, which I think they are, I've owned an additional three.

I'm likely done buying them.  The last one I bought that I regularly drive, I've had now almost twenty years.  Petroleum vehicles are coming to an end, and at age 60, I'm also coming to an end.

But I've never gotten over my love for real trucks, and hence this blog on them.

My 07 Dodge 3500.

AM Radio To Go.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less loc...: 

May 13, 2023

Ford Motors will no longer put AM radio in its vehicles.  Any of them.  Many other manufacturers are pulling theirs from electric vehicles.

Seems odd to say that I've owned three vehicles, two of them types of trucks, which had no radios at all, unless I put them in.  The first was a Willys 1958 M38A1, the second a 1962 Dodge W300, the third a 1946 Jeep CJ2A. 

The 58 M38A1 had a radio installed in it from some other vehicle.  The first vehicle I owned, I can't really recall how it was installed now.  I put a radio in the 62 Dodge.  I never did put one in the 46 CJ2A.

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: First East Bay Ship by Truck

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Picture: First East Bay Ship by Truck: 

The Big Picture: First East Bay Ship by Truck