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and Dearborn. These are all turkeys, albeit valuable
ones, but not the feathered kind.
As a sideline to his auto parts business, Van Horn
ran probably the only public museum in Middle
America devoted to antique trucks.
A sizable portion of his collection comprises trucks
built in Chicago, which, for the first half of the century,
was a center for the manufacture of commercial vehi-
cles--everything from buses to dump trucks.
Since 1899, the year after the first American truck ap-
peared (a Winton from Cleveland), at least 88 compa-
nies in Chicago and its environs have gone into the
business of building trucks. As many as 26 compa-
nies were operating in 1919.
"Chicago was quite a truck town," reminisced Paul R.
Gordon, 91, retired sales manager for Diamond T Mo-
tor Car Co., a Chicago truck builder until the company
was merged out of existence in 1958. Only a handful
of truckmakers
survive. The big-
gest is Navistar
International
Corp., which for
most of this cen-
tury was known
as International
Harvester Corp.
and which built
trucks under the International and IHC names. "We
built our first truck in 1907, and 91 years later we're
still doing it," said John R. Horne, Navistar's chairman
and chief executive.
Diamond T was Chicago's No. 2 truck builder, but its
vehicles now exist mainly in the antiques collections
of men such as Van Horn; George Schaaf, of subur-
ban Frankfort; and Bill Schutt, of Western Springs.
Schutt heads Windy City Chapter of American Truck
Historical Society and owns seven Diamond Ts.
Van Horn Truckload of History
Lloyd Van Horn
Page 10
Recyclers News Press