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Van Horn Truckload of History
Lloyd Van Horn
The family-owned Hendrickson Motor Truck Co. was
a major builder of specialty trucks until it was sold in
1978 to John Boler of Boler Industries, who then
sold the truck operation to a Michigan company that
makes HME trucks.
Specialty truckmakers also survive. Federal Signal
Corp., in Oak Brook, builds Emergency One fire
trucks and Elgin street sweepers. W.S. Darley & Co.,
in suburban Melrose Park, makes fire trucks.
"In the early part of the century, trucking was largely
regional, and, as a result, so was truck building,"
said Donald F. Wood, professor of transportation at
San Francisco State University's College of Busi-
ness and author of 10 books on trucks.
Lloyd Van Horn is also a celebrated author and au-
thority on antique trucks. He shares his knowledge
and his pen with anyone who has the mind to listen.
Fascinating is the only word to describe the
knowledge that Lloyd has gained on the subject of
antique trucks.
The earliest trucks were primarily delivery vehicles
that shuttled goods around big cities in competition
with horse-drawn wagons in the first two decades of
the century. Railroads were the dominant form of
transportation and there was no national highway
system. Rural areas had dirt roads that became im-
passable in bad weather, but cities had paved
streets that could handle heavy trucks. So local mar-
kets for trucks developed in the cities.
Rural areas didn't have paved roads until the
1920s, and the big intercity truck--the tractor-trailer
or semi-trailer--didn't come into widespread use until
World War II though it had been developed earlier,
Wood said. No less than 29 companies started build-
ing trucks in Chicago in the first decade of this cen-
tury, and they were joined by another 40 from 1911
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