(first posted 10/15/2017) I happened to find my way to Plan59.com, and decided to take an extended break at the truck stop there, as it was cold and rainy outside (winter has arrived early here this year, there’s already skiing on Mt. Hood). I’ve perused many of their car art collection, but hadn’t really delved into the truck section, which is like getting lost in a good-sized museum wing.
Back in the late 40s and early 50s, a good number of these paintings and renderings for ads were signed by the artist, and I’m going to share some with you. There’s also a few that were not signed, but I felt were quite worthy. Needless to say, advertising was in a very different state of consciousness back then. Most of these probably had just a line or so underneath them, as the picture was what was compelling, then and now.
This first one, of Advance Design 1950 Chevrolets, is by Peter Helck, whose name we’ll see again here.
Helck also did this one, which depicts a number of 1950 Chevy trucks and one sedan.
Another Helck, this one from 1953.
We’ll see a number of Autocars, this one from 1945 is by O. Baumann.
Another 1945 Autocar ad, by William Campbell.
One more 1945 Autocar ad, by Frank Waltrich.
Also by William Campbell.
As is this one.
This one is by Campbell too, from 1947.
A 1954 painting by Melbourne Brindle.
Not trucks, but a dramatic image by Robert Riggs.
EMD diesel-electric locomotives by Blaine.
1952 Chevies by Peter Helck.
An evocative farm scene with 1950 Chevrolets by Helck.
One more by Helck, of these 1950 Chevies.
This one is not attributed, but a fine work of ’54 Chevies at work.
1955 Chevies in another unattributed piece.
1953 Dodge dumper; not attributed.
1941 Fargo (Canadian Dodge); unattributed.
1955 Mack; unattributed.
1949 Studebaker, by Frederic Tellander.
Tellander is back with a 1953 Studebaker truck, and the tail end of a new ’53 Coupe.
One more by Tellander. He could probably draw these Stude trucks in his sleep, especially blue ones.
And finally, another dramatic one, a 1953 Mack, unattributed.
More vintage truck paintings at Plan59.com.
Thank you Paul ! .
They certainly put a lot of emotion in these adverts .
-Nate
There is a recurring simple and wholesome theme through all these images that evokes a sense of with hard work and the right tools, we will all prosper. It is sad that with the passage of time, that we have come to have a supposedly more sophisticated but also a more jaded viewpoint. I guess it’s a comment about our society.
Couldn’t have said it better. These old ads evoke a real sense of optimism, don’t they?
FWIW ;
It’s still barely possible but needs more effort than many are willing to invest .
I grew up looking at this sort of propaganda and took it to heart, managed to become a shop and home owner, raised up a little American Family and am doing O.K. although I’ll prolly never be able to afford a new car ~ there are more important things in life to me .
The editor here has really done well by hard work and prolly more of it than I did on the Farm in the 1960’s ~ I’m sure many here have too and just don’t want to toot their own horns .
Never give up .
Pops and I saw “They Drive By Night” in the theatre, his comment ‘that wasn’t a Bogy film, it was The Joe Show’ .
-Nate
I wonder if these paintings could be called “Capitalist Realism?”
I love the 55 Mack picture with the kid on his home made gocart (remember those?) with the Mack hood ornament on it.
75Olds88 captures the beauty of the era with his remarks. Thank you, Paul, for bringing these to your web site. As you all must know by now, I love seeing these trucks having sole trucks for many years. The depictions are indeed sweet and gentle yet show the work ethic. The dump truck bodied Dodge shows a strong man outside of the truck and another at the wheel. The Mack tractor with its passenger waving to the boy in his homemade car is a gem. All of these are scenes of an America whose time has passed unfortunately. I love the Studebaker ad in what appears to be a Connecticut town in 1949 with the town green, the stores and a Starlight Coupe int he rear. Thanks to laws in many Connecticut towns, you can go there today and see these very same scenes.
By the way, we children of that area really did wave to truck drivers. Does anyone remember the sound of chain-drive A-model Macks with hard rubber wheels? Have you ever been in a country setting and you could hear a Diesel-powered truck coming towards you from miles away? They were that noisy. Listening to a cab-over-engine Autocar dump coal down a shoot is a sound one never forgets. Paul, you toched my heart with these pictures.
Beautiful old trucks, they sure don’t make them like they used to. This Texaco fuel truck is on display at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
Theres another sone in a museum near nvercargill New Zealand in the HWRichardson collection, I plan to visit that while in this part of the country.
Well, now we know: we reached “Peak Oil” in 1947-pulled by an Autocar! I am also touched by the attention the artists gave to the people in the pictures. Having grown up around working men, I recognize these poses as true to life. And, yes, we waved at truckers, and they waved back, and on clear days we hung our arms out the windows. My favorite is of the man on his toes, with the hand truck, in the ’52 Chevy piece. People who engage in repetitive physical labor develop an economy and grace of movement that is only matched in really professional dance. We just don’t get to see as much of that any more.
These are so awesome! I loved seeing these on a quiet Sunday morning.
Beautiful images. The colour palette most of them work with is fascinating. I wonder whether it was purely a stylistic choice or had something to do with colours available in a larger industrial sense. For whatever reason, they are very much of their time.
The series reminds me of one of my favourite movies of that era, ‘They Drive By Night’.
Thanks Paul! What a great way to start my Sunday mid-morning. Terrific stuff, back when ad’s took days to produce, not minuets on a computer
“Say Joe… you s’pose this fuss with clearance lamps and passenger side mirrors is gonna catch on?”
“Who knows, next the pansies will wanna crowd the cab with a heater box…”
That last one (with a darker twist) reminds me of the 1953 movie, The Wages of Fear.
Just love that Mack truck AND the kid with his homemade wagon.Wonder if today`s texting-smart phone addicted kids have any idea of what kids did for fun back in the day.
What great artwork! Sign me up for a half ton Studebaker with the big Commander 6.
To me, these images have a certain element of The Twilight Zone to them:
(cue to Rod Serling voice)
“Imagine, if you will, a world inhabited by trucks and cars of a single year and make, cars and trucks that are eternally new, unscuffed and unsullied by the wear and tear of the world as we know it…”
Beautiful pictures, all of them, thanks for compiling! Now I have an urge to go and rent a truck and do something manly with it.
Just another note: None of these old big trucks have West Coast mirrors on them. Those were only on the West Coast and came later. Finally, we got them on trucks in the east. Can you imagine driving a rig with those dinky outside rear view mirrors? Love the coming attractions to “They Drive By Night” too. “Okay sister, have it your way” or whatever tough guy statements needed to be made.
My favorite is that moonlit cloudy night with the Autocar rig motoring through the night. So moody, and I can remember some long moon lit, all night drives, putting down the miles, Just beautiful! My new screen saver.
I like that one as well, it’s coming out of one of the tunnels on the PA turnpike, Lancaster, PA carrier so working west of the company HQ.
Good call.
I too thought that I recognized location as PA tunnel, but then wrote it off to being generic location of artistic license.
The , then, “almost new, PA turnpike”.
my favorite too with that beautiful sky and likely a full moon. Great perspective!
Do we think that exhaust systems were deliberately omitted to keep the beholder’s mind from drifting to noxious exhaust smoke; especially Mack’s?
I kind of doubt it, lots of trucks in those days had under frame exhausts. Everyone’s diesel was smoky, and big gas engines ran rich enough to make your eyes water if you were caught behind one.
It would be a few years yet before air pollution became a mainstream concern.
I well remember what it was like to get caught behind a Greyhound or loaded tractor trailer on BC’s windy mountain highways. With few passing lanes, you could eat a lot of smoke before you got around. And then if you did get around him, when you hit a downhill stretch you had to really move or the SOB would pass you…
Cool old ads, I had forgotten all about plan 59!
In the mid-late 40s and into the 50s, these big Autocars and other big trucks just as often had gasoline engines than diesels, and they didn’t use/need exhaust stacks.
As I remember it, the diesels generally did all have stacks, as otherwise their black plumes could be a problem at street level.
Right, Paul. Although diesel engines for heavy trucks began to appear in the middle 1930’s, fleet owners were a conservative lot and tended to stick with what they knew: big lunks of gasoline motors. The Second World War also delayed the development and adoption of diesels in the civilian market somewhat.
Companies like Hall-Scott built some enormous marine, stationary and rail engines. The photo below shows one of their truck powerplants installed in a 1936 Fageol fire truck. The specs of the H-S 175 are impressive: a 5 inch bore and a 6 inch stroke resulted in 707 cubic inches. Horsepower was only 175, but these motors were all about torque. Twin updraft Schebler carbs assured an ample supply of fuel and twin ignition guaranteed it would go boom.
The ultimate Hall-Scott gasoline truck engine was the 400. The big inline OHC six could be had in either 935 or 1,091 cubic inches and developed up to 940-lbs.ft. of torque at 1,350 RPM. Sometimes ordered with butane injection, this option would cause a distinctive blue flame from the stack under power. This ad is from February, 1948.
“Sometimes ordered with butane injection, this option would cause a distinctive blue flame from the stack under power.”
Interesting Gene Herman. Can you shed some light on the “butane injection” option? Never heard of it with a spark engine. Being a factory option it sounds like the injection may have been a sophisticated refined system?
It doesn’t sound the same as common old LP fueled systems, which could hardly deserve the “injection” tag.
My mistake, Jim. I blame the early time of my post and my spotty memory at that hour. Hall-Scott 400’s could be ordered as gasoline OR butane burners as you can see in the small print in that ad, not with an intake system that combined the two fuels.
It was the butane burners would occasionally emit a blue flame from their stacks at night.
The green autocar truck illustration (8th picture down by William Campbell) wasn’t afraid to show plenty of smoke pouring out of the factory’s smoke stacks.
Interesting to note the colours the artists used: strong reds, oranges and yellows that weren’t seen on cars of the era.
Kind of an artistic Technicolor.
I was there and yes, there were lots and lots of bright reds and yellows .
Both tended to fade in the direct sun and God knows ~ few work rigs ever got waxed or polished .
The 1949 Chevy Phillips 66 heating oil truck I ran in 1968 was red and grey, the red had faded quite a bit by then and it smoked horribly but it ran well and ascended those steep hills easily if slowly .
-Nate
Wonderful stuff, Paul. Aside from being a fine artist and master illustrator, Peter Helck was an enthusiast of auto racing’s earliest days since he lived through those days and saw first hand many of the mighty beasts that ran back then.
On the table next to the bottle in this ad he did for Johnnie Walker Black is a model of the famous 1906 Locomobile Vanderbilt Cup racer known as “Old 16”. It was a natural subject for him since he bought the actual car in 1941 and kept it until his death in 1989. If the idea of a 1,197 cubic INCH four cylinder engine gets your attention, you can read more about what some consider “The Greatest American Racing Car” here….
http://theoldmotor.com/?p=65910
One of my favorites is his “Death Defying Combat”, which depicts an imaginary race between the 1903 Premier and Barney Oldfield in a Peerless. I’d been captivated by the Premier’s giant aircooled engine with an OHC, but didn’t realize just how pioneering and historically significant it was until I saw it at the Indy museum, and then did some further research on it. It was almost certainly the first hemi-head car engine.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/museum-classicautomotive-history-1903-premier-the-first-ohc-hemi-head-automobile-engine-and-the-search-for-the-hemis-true-father/
Yeah. Giant OHV (and sometimes even OHC) motors with all the mechanicals out in the wind. The main reason I love the cars of this era is that there were absolutely no rules back then. Everything was new and experimentation and innovation were the order of the day. Electric and steam power all over the place, too.
http://theoldmotor.com/?p=13440
Please excuse the picture quality. I tried to make copies of these pages from the book ” Those Wonderful Old Automobiles” by Floyd Clymer. I ended up taken photos of them with my cell phone.
Second file.
Cool stuff. One of my favorite things about the Johnnie Walker ad is that the painting on the easel is another one of his illustrations, ”Speed Demons of 1904”, perhaps the earliest example of “picture in picture” technology. 😉
Paul, thanks for these and the link. Astonishing imagery. Maynard’s Dad captured it perfectly by calling these “Capitalist Realism.” Hard to pick a favorite, although if forced, I’d pick two – the Mack with the kid on the soapbox racer and “54 Chevies at work.” I’m surprised no-one has mentioned Norman Rockwell, as these illustrators were capturing similar slices of Americana in the 50s, even if Rockwell’s were editorial and these advertising.
It’s also interesting how much less distorted these images are than those used in car ads and brochures of the 50s and 60s, taken to its zenith with the wide-track Pontiac images. These feel so much more authentic, even if idealized.
Thanks Paul, this is indeed fantastic artwork like we don’t see anymore-it makes me wonder if the Puritan Work Ethic which these ads personified is still with us today.
My FAVORITE locomotive.
Love these.
Wonderful works of art. My favorite is the Autocar logger. The rig, the scenery, the “work in progress”, the colors. Just perfect.
For obvious reasons I’m a huge fan of Charles Burki’s work.
“One more by Helck, of these 1950 Chevies.” … interesting that in 1950 Helck used the quite obsolete EMC FT diesels in the background vs. the latest and greatest by EMD at the time, the F7 or GP7.
Glorious stuff! Thanks for posting
Haven’t seen those yellow arrow / black background directional signals since I was a kid. They used to be on almost every truck here in New York, although I remember them usually mounted on top of the fenders unlike over the bumper as in Peter Helck’s first painting. Tankers had to have a “grounding chain” in the rear. Sparks would fly, jingling noises were heard as fuel oil or gasoline trucks passed.
These illustrations also call to mind something else lost – respect for truckers. In our current state of instant gratification via Amazon, their wheel time is the final link. How many of us drive 70 hours a week, deal with untold traffic, automobile/SVU driver shenanigans, and no place to take federally mandated rest breaks when we’re done?
On a side note, my fleet of 1988-9 AutoCar boom and flatbed trucks looked identical to those depicted here!
Some pretty awesome artwork!
The first image reminds me of some of the early scenes in The Irishman.
The second photo looks like something from a Christmas card or post card sent by a dealership to its commercial customers. Just needs a stake truck full of Xmas trees and Xmas lights on the canopy in the foreground.
Back then, would they have “Merry Christmas” or “Season’s Greeting” stamped on the card??
In front of the silo on the farm scene is a green tractor the sure looks like an 8N Ford or Ferguson TO2o
I missed this glorious parade last time. Hugely enjoyable collection.
What ever happened to all the bright color choices? Everything today is the same 3 boring colors.