(first posted 11/7/2017) This Olson Kurb Van has a special place in my heart. It has sat here for as long as I’ve been shooting CCs; in fact it sat right behind the ’72 Cadillac that was the subject of my first CC, until the Caddy finally disappeared a few years back. It’s time to give the Kurb Van its 15 minutes of fame.
Here’s how these three CCs looked until recently. What an eclectic combo. I shared the Corolla Liftback with you just recently, but I’m sure I wrote it up in the past too. And sandwiched between them was that gnarly old Caddy Coupe DeVille. I really miss it.
And I was hoping to document its slow decline for decades to come. As in the growth of the moss in the trunk, and the lichens on the roof. Oh well.
I don’t think it was a happy ending, especially once the side window was smashed in. So much for that.
I’m hoping the Kurb Van has a slower decline, which may well be the case given its aluminum body and superb construction.
Olson is a storied name in vans. A NYC Chevrolet dealer, Walter Heingartner, is credited with conceiving of the aluminum-bodied step van in 1939 or so. Seeing all of the many independent laundry companies, he rightfully theorized that an aluminum body would be lighter, more efficient, and of course more corrosion-resistant. He was friends with Jimmy Olson, then head of the State Liquor Authority, who agreed with him, and happened to know “Jake” Swirbul, one of the founders of Grumman.
Grumman was the single largest producer of carrier-based planes in WW2, like this F6F Hellcat, and knew a thing or two about aluminum. After the war, it was open to new ways of using its expertise. The aluminum step van was conceived before the war, but took a bit longer to enter production. But by 1946, Grumman-Olson vans were in production, and they quickly caught on, with large fleets like UPS as well as independents.
The above paragraph was conveniently lifted from my previous CC on an older Olson Kurb Side van, which is of course the official CC van.
This was of course a Sunbeam Bread delivery truck.
Little Miss Sunbeam has faded over the decades.
Here’s how she looked in her youth.
And here’s a little blurb about her origins.
It’s been some time since the cloying odor of fresh white bread filled the back of the van. The Ford six cylinder engine is visible up there. It probably didn’t have to work very hard, as that white bread is about 92% air (and most of the balance is chemicals, dough conditioners and preservatives). Yumm!
Here’s the business end. I bet that seat got some serious work in its day. Note how the wear is of course all on the right side, where the driver slid off and on to get the bread from the back and then hop out the curbside door to deliver it.
The scourge of all hitchhikers. Not that one was ever likely to get a ride in a bread van; well, while it was still a bread van. Old vans like this were popular back in the day along with school buses as hip mobile homes, and I did get a ride in a few of them.
The driver’s rear corner is missing in action. Did someone hit it while it was parked, or did the driver back over something?
As long lasting these aluminum bodies are, the steel hardware is suffering from pretty bad rust. That might be both from the elements and/or possibly from the aluminum not being adequately insulated form the galvanized steel. I assume some galvanic corrosion is a factor between these two metals.
Unlike the Cadillac, this van has a much more secure future, given the considerable demand for vintage vans as food carts. I’m surprised it hasn’t yet succumbed to that yet. I know! The should make and sell…hipster white bread.
Very nice indeed .
Ready to become a camper or mobile service rig……
-Nate
“After the war, [Grumman] was open to new ways of using its expertise.”… Anyone who attended Boy Scout camp (or any youth camp for that matter) has seen another example of this: Grumman aluminum canoes are still the mainstay of almost every waterfront.
I wondered how long it would take for someone to mention those Grumman canoes. I earned my one and only Boy Scout merit badge on those!
They are light to carry, and so much tougher than the cedar and canvas ones, but they are really cold in the early spring when the ice has just gone out.
I’ll bet they are as tough as the planes were. Grumman Hellcats, Wildcats and Avengers were so sturdily designed and constructed, with the survival and return of the plane and pilot always in mind, that the factory in which they were constructed was fondly referred to as the “Grumman Iron Works.” Which is wonderfully ironic, given that the planes they were building were primarily constructed of aluminum.
I love the van. Being an old Sunbeam Bread van makes it all the better. Anyone from Fort Wayne has a soft spot for Sunbeam Bread as it maintained the coolest sign ever to grace a bread factory. Everybody knows that a Sunwich is better than a sandwich.
Apparently Miss Sunbeam (who used to watch over the never-ending cascade of bread slices) was blown off in a windstorm some years back, but the motorized 1957-vintage sign still graces the bakery.
It must be seen in action to be appreciated.
That is the coolest. Just a rotating loaf is the best we can do around here.
I love the spinning bread loaf
That looks more like a mailbox than a loaf of bread…
These are an interesting build because they contain components of earlier truck production -when they were used throughout the lineup- which apparently were continued to be built in small numbers just for the “bread truck” line.
IE: “ear mount” clutch housing, horseshoe front mount, beam axle…
Oh, and CC#1, the ’72 Cad? Looks to have been backdated with a ’71 grille at some point.
I like it!
When I was in my early teens, my dad bought a former Rich Loaf bread truck that had been converted for camping use. It was a ’52 Ford with steel body, though. The logos were gone, but the paint was similar to the original blue body with white roof used by Rich Loaf.
A small house-type window and two fold-down cots had been added to each side. A plywood bulkhead separated the driver’s compartment from the sleeping area.
The engine was possibly the original Mileage Maker OHV Ford six and it had three on the tree. Dad made several winter trips from Ohio to Florida in that old bus. It died from old age, aggravated by terminal rust sometime around 1980.
I was too young to drive it, other than maneuvering it some around the property.
Later, in my 20’s, I was a delivery driver for the Carquest warehouse in Columbus, where the fleet had several different Chevy P30s and similarly sized aluminum bodied vans. (Mostly) good times!
I’m a former bread truck owner… a 1971 Chevy P10 Butternut edition. It was our Bears tailgating truck from 2001-2008.
They’re fun to drive in a bizarre way. 4 on the floor and zero pickup, but fun. Well, at least different.
Bread van central, in Stugis, Michigan. This all looks newer. I was in there in 82, and it was the worst dump imaginable. .
iirc, the Post Office LLVs which used to sport Grumman badges, were built in a plant in PA (enter rant about government contracts and politicians “creating jobs” regardless of cost here)
This article brought back some good memories. Around 1980, around 15 years old, I had a part time summer job in a resort area, part of a 3-person crew delivering bundles of free newspapers to bars, restaurants and motels. One night a week, the oldest guy as our driver, we made the rounds, stopping at each business, tossing bundles to each other out the back door and depositing them at the businesses. We had a lot of fun tooling around town in the ungainly vehicle.
This was somewhat of a dream come true for me. From a very young age I gazed in awe of UPS drivers, thinking what a romantic occupation that must have been, driving around in the cool brown truck, door open, delivering boxes to people’s houses.
That experience, two summers worth, before I was even old enough to drive, was the closest I ever got to achieving my childhood dream of being a UPS driver.
My dad, who was a mechanic, once had an old bread truck. He bought it in bad shape, cleaned it up and replaced the engine and turned it into a mobile shop. Overloaded with tools and supplies, it was slow as molasses-it must have accelerated at a comparatively brisker pace with a load of bread-but it did what he needed it to do. I liked being able to visit him, park my car behind the truck, and have all the tools right there.
Thanks for the memories.
That’s a beauty. In my USAF career we had lots of these types of vans that were used as maintenance support vehicles – shuffling parts and maintenance personnel on the flightline to fix aircraft – they were always referred to as “bread trucks”….
When I was in college, in the 1980s, I got a job washing trucks at Brown’s Bakery in Defiance, OH. I went in for 2 nights a week.
I would pull them in and out and use a compressor/power washer in the open area of the bakery garage.
As I recall, most of the bodies on the trucks were made by Grumman, in a very similar style (except they had full width sliding rear doors).
Sadly, after over 100 years in business, the family-owned bakery sold out to Hostess. When Hostess got in financial trouble, it was one of the facilities that they shut down.
Defiance OH? Must have been attending Defiance College – Class of ’99 Alumni here.
Cool van, I never thought about (ok, realized) that they were aluminum… You know, the Lane Motor Museum used to be a Sunbeam Bakery…
Wouldn’t a step van make an incredible sleeper? They’re not that heavy, and there’d be plenty of room with the “boiler room” to hide some BIG power and rubber.
I guess there aren’t diaper trucks anymore, but it should be lettered in some livery that’d be equally humbling to those who tried to get a jump on it.
I noticed the lack of Caddy recently as well, Paul. I walk by that place often. I assume the (rather eclectic) owner of these CC’s lives in that building? Never seen these rigs in action.
Six years later and those rigs are long gone.
I’m wrong, the van is still there. Just saw it earlier.
Nice write-up and I assume the registration is expired.
Worked on lots of these vans back n the day. we referred to these vehicles as Bread vans or Pie wagons as they used a P-Chassis. As someone else mentioned these vans were fun to drive, especially when empty. The local major newspaper had a whole fleet of these vans. The drivers would beat the hell out of them. They should have had RPM governors on them. Occasionally we would drive them with the doghouse of to diagnose engine problems. The exhaust manifolds would glow red under load climbing hills. Very tough vehicles.
The fire department I was on had a ’73 Chevy P30 that they used as a rescue/EMS truck. It had a 350 4 barrel with a 4 speed and it felt like a hot rod compared to the other trucks, it was actually kinda fun to drive. They kept it until about 2005 then gave it to the city public works department, I’m pretty sure they still have it and it probably doesn’t have more than 40k miles on it.
Another automotive brand I’ve never heard of. I like the little window in the A pillar.
Amazingly, the Sunbeam that makes bread is unrelated to the Sunbeam that makes toasters. How did that not lead to any trademark lawsuits?
A chevrolet dealership I started working at after High School took in trade a very well used P-30 Stepvan 292 4- speed, it was probably a late 60’s.model It started life delivering the Boston Globe, then was used by a painting company. It would sit for months and always started and ran good. I would use it occasionally and really enjoyed rowing that shift lever at my side!
Yes, they were fantastic work vans .
We had a 197? P30 kitted out as a mobile shop in our fleet .
We added a ‘Red Dot’ (brand) roof top AC unit as it was unbearable in the back most of the year in Los Angeles .
Steel counter top, BIG vise, oxy-acetlylene welding set up etc .
I should have bought it when we salvaged it, IIRC we got under $400 for it.
-Nate