William Campbell created a series of 53 ads for Autocar between 1943 and 1948. Here’s a selection for your time-traveling enjoyment. Many of the these trucks rendered by Campbell represent actual trucks in service by Autocar owners.
Vintage Ads: 1943-1948 Autocar Ads – Do They Cost More Or Less?
– Posted on January 2, 2022
I hadn’t realized it before but were two-person teams common for driving these daycabs back in “the day”? It seems half of the ads show someone in the passenger side seat assuming they are all left-hand-drive as the locales would seem to indicate. Getting rid of that second person seems the first huge cost savings step towards today’s goal of getting rid of the other person, i.e. the driver themself.
The wipers too seem odd – sometimes they are left sweep, sometimes right, and sometimes split/clap style.
Great artwork though, all of them would make a fine gallery.
I would guess that some artistic license is on display in some of these ads. A truck drivers helper would be very useful unloading sacks of flour or hay bales, but not so much in a milk truck or an oil tanker. Pep pills kept tired drivers going back then. Those Autocars were a stout machine. I knew of a few that were still being used into the early 90s hauling gravel. Love the ads too. They make it all look so fun that it wouldn’t matter if they even paid you.
They weren’t. It’s artistic license, to have someone wave or interact with a person on the ground.
Some of the illustrations don’t appear to have any wipers at all. I think many in those days were individually controlled and may be “parked” in either direction.
Pulled this out of cold storage recently. It is an original goache on card signed at upper right by the noted Philadelphia commercial artist, William Campbell. It is the 1943 artwork for Autocar Truck print ad that appeared in 1944. It has a irregular vertical wrinkle in center but the color is fresh and bright.
I have kept this as a memento of harder days and it appealed to me as an attractive image. It was taped to the wall of a small, dump apartment I moved into on Race Street a block west of Broad in Philly circa 1972 or so. I remember eating lunches at Father Divine’s and giving half of my salary to my ex wife (who was making almost as much as I was). I do not miss those days.
I was informed a few years ago that it is the only known surviving original William Campbell artwork for his series of Autocar advertising. Seems the apartment was likely Campbell’s abode prior to my occupancy.
Great post, I enjoyed the gritty realism of the artwork!
I have lived within a mile or two of Ardmore, Pa for most of my 62 years. I had no idea that Autocar and it’s plant on Lancaster Avenue are a part of local history.
A quick Google search revealed the company moved to Exton, Pa. in 1954, and a fire destroyed the Ardmore factory in 1956.
“In 1953 Autocar was taken over by the White Motor Company which made Autocar their top-of-the-line brand,” according to a well-researched entry in Wikipedia. “White was taken over in turn by Volvo Trucks in 1981 with Autocar continuing as a division.”
Autocar appears to be a going concern, headquartered in Alabama.
“fire destroyed the Ardmore factory in 1956.”
That would explain why I never knew it was there – I don’t have any memories of the area before maybe 1970 or so, and only visited infrequently. I’ll bet that was some mighty valuable real estate when Autocar sold it. At least then – I can only imagine the environmental nightmares lurking underground that nobody would have given a second thought to in the 50s.
That was my immediate thought upon looking at these ads as well. I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, about 10 mi. from Ardmore, and never knew about Autocar having had a presence there.
I saw an Autocar a few months ago in SW Virginia — sitting in a field, but it didn’t look in too bad condition. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it.
Oh, and these are great-looking ads.
I had never realized that Autocar had its HQ and manufacturing facilities in Ardmore, PA, right in the heart of Philly’s Main Line. My father grew up there and I visited my grandparents in several homes in that area from the 60s-80s – I could not imagine that there was ever a factory there – it was evidently turned into a shopping center (West Ardmore Shopping Center) right near the Ardmore station.
Autocar is back in business as a standalone specialty truck manufacturer, this time located in eastern Indiana (Hagerstown). You won’t see them pulling semi trailers, but maybe they are collecting your garbage.
team drivers were often the norm for freight since much of the loading and unloading was done by hand. Also no power steering, no air ride seats and no air conditioning made for a grueling day and relief drivers were necessary for longer runs. Lastly streets and docks were often narrow and congested. The relief driver would act as a traffic director and spotter so the driver could navigate to the loading dock safely. Changing a tire, a frequent occurrence also benefited from a second person. Now most road drivers have no touch palletized freight and much easier working conditions. Local delivery drivers have lift gates, pallet jacks and off road lifts to save time and improve safety. We have come a long way since the 60’s
I beg to differ. Certainly in some cases that might have happened, but it was not at all the norm. And having a relief driver ride in the same noisy day cab doesn’t make much sense.
The large long-haul trucking firms used strategically located crew-shift locations such as their terminals or a designated truck stop to switch out drivers. The relieved driver would then spend the night in a motel or more likely in a dorm room in the terminal, and then pick up a truck heading back the next day, relieving its driver.
The overwhelming majority of company drivers were Teamsters, and the union rules covered all that. Owner-operators almost invariably went solo, unless they had a sleeper cab in which case they might hire a relief driver to ride along and switch out.
Day cab trucks operated either regionally, not long distance, or between the terminals of a big company where drivers would switch out.
Loading and unloading of big trucks was done mostly in warehouses, where there were warehouse workers.
Of course there were always exceptions for certain situations.
There’s some great old films on You Tube that show how trucking firms mostly worked back then.
If you hadn’t named the artist I would have first guessed these illustrations were done by Bruce McCall of “Bulgemobile” fame. I wonder if they informed McCall’s style. They have the same focus on larger-than life vehicles, people with expressive faces, and interesting backgrounds and details.
I think McCall accurately copied those existing advertising characteristics as a means to increase the effectiveness of his satire.
In 1979 I had a restoration shop in Maryland when Bruce McCall contacted me, after picking up my business card at the fall Carlisle show. He was looking for a working tailgate window winding crank assembly for a 1954 Mopar wagon. As I had recently bought the April issue of National Lampoon containing the BulgeMobile piece he had authored, I let him know how much I really enjoyed every bit of it.
After hearing I owned a 1951 Studebaker Commander Starlight coupe, one of the things he told me was seeing the early postwar Studebaker ads featuring really tiny people depicted in the cars, was one of the factors he considered in creating the original 1946 BulgeMobiles piece.
Some of his ideas like the “Blue Cloud six” came to him when he was still in high school, that of course being based on Chevy’s famous Blue Flame Six. When he noticed the names Chevrolet used for their wagons typically ended in “wood”, he said the idea of his 1946 BulgeMobile woodie wagon having the name of “Firewood” was “a given”.
I suspect that when they talk about costing less they’re referencing total cost of operation, and costing more in terms of original purchase price. It’s surprising the ad agency let that be implied by “…but they’re worth more” rather than more plainly connecting the dots.
Apparently, that “costs more, and worth it” narrative didn’t work too well for them, as they were taken over by White in 53.
Those of us of a certain age remember ads for Curtis Mathes TVs touting their high price, with similar claims of being “worth it”. Curtis Mathes went bankrupt in 1992.
Radio Shack insisted it’s premium priced goods were worth more than those offered at big box discounters. Radio Shack went bankrupt in 2015.
I’m not sure that “costs more, and worth it” narrative gets much traction in other than a small niche market.
Respectfully, there’s a significant difference between the purchase decision process driving consumer products and industrial products. The failure of a consumer product strategy isn’t necessarily relevant to an industrial product.
Trucks are bought for a range of practical and quantifiable factors. A higher purchase price is easily overcome if other benefits, such as productivity, longevity, less down time and other cost benefits can be demonstrated.
Consumer products are more tricky because the purchase decision is less practical and more emotional.
Respectfully, there’s a significant difference between the purchase decision process driving consumer products and industrial products.
A recent commercial product example: Boeing 737 Max. They patched up a 50 year old airframe, instead of a clean sheet design, for cost and schedule. When they discovered an aerodynamic problem, it tended to pitch up, they put in a stick pusher. rather than redesigning the thing, for cost and schedule. And the killer, while the rule on airliners has been triple redundant systems as long as I can remember, they connected the stick pusher to a single AOA vane (second vane available at extra cost) , so the pilots had no way of knowing if the AOA vane was out of whack, for cost.
Radio Shack’s killer blunder was having gone all-in on cellphones and phone accessories which meant, immediately, that they were renting their medium-size retail spaces while competing with mall kiosks. This was followed fairly quickly by the cellular carriers opening their own retail storefronts, and meant that Radio Shack had nothing for the up-and-coming maker movement that would’ve found a natural home in their old stores.
Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business –The Onion (don’t be eating or drinking when you read this, or you’re likely to damage your keyboard and monitor).
Yup. I went in to the local RS a week or two before it closed, after the second BK. I saw a couple neat things. One was repair kits for RC drones, by make and model. They had revived the project boards from the 70s, except they had all the parts included with the board, instead of the board coming with a list of parts to be picked off the peg boards. They had a selection of parts for building robots. Too little, too late.
I couldn’t believe they had gotten rid of the burglar alarms and PA equipment. The stores I ran were in lower income/high crime areas, and I made a bundle selling burglar alarms, and that is a segment Best Buy was not in.
Their largest problem was their overhead. Many stores were in enclosed shopping malls, with stratospheric occupancy costs. Their inventory turn rate was terrible. RS needed 40 points of GP to break even. Best Buy makes a profit with half that GP. I saw people try to explain how uncompetitive their pricing was to the then President of RS, Bernie Appel. Bernie would thunder “I’ve been in this business forty years, and I know everything”, or “we do people a favor when we sell them our stuff”. My District Manager would give me the stink eye and say “you think our products are worth the price, right?”
Here’s some of the maker products they were carrying when the lights when out.
I’ve never seen a Curtis Mathes TV, though I remember seeing the ads on my parents’ old RCA Colour Trak. I don’t think they were sold in Canada. I didn’t know that Curtis Mathes went out of business until I checked out the website. Then again, a TV isn’t something you buy very often, and in the early ‘90’s I had a Mitsubishi set that did the job quite well for many years.
I’ve never seen a Curtis Mathes TV, though I remember seeing the ads on my parents’ old RCA Colour Trak. I don’t think they were sold in Canada.
Curtis Mathes was a real person. He was killed in an Air Canada airliner, when the interior caught on fire, several years ago.
It was in 1983, when an Air Canada DC-9 caught fire midair and with an truly heroic feat of airmanship, the pilot actually landed the aircraft safely. The real reason was never found but at the time many linked it to the recent ban on smoking on domestic flights but there was no evidence to prove this.
Canadian folk music legend Stan Rogers was among the victims.
Curtis Mathes was one of the many manufacturers of audio or video products that suffered the indignity of their brand name getting sold to an unrelated concern after they went out of business. I remember cheap-looking “Curtis Mathes” TVs being sold at K mart in the ’90s or ’00s, along with “Advent” and “KLH” TVs and DVD players at Best Buy. All of these obviously had nothing to do with the companies that made those brands’ reputations. Old once-proud brand names like RCA or Westinghouse seem to be available to anyone willing to pay a licensing fee. My favorites are those that wind up on products the real company never made, like Bell & Howell laptop bags. Is anyone fooled into thinking these aren’t made by some anonymous Chinese company with no connection to the original company? (answer apparently is yes, since this keeps happening).
Enjoyed seeing the gasoline delivery trucks. When I was a little kid, my father’s cousin built an “Atlantic” service station across the street from my house that I could see looking out of my window. These days, it’s a “CITGO” convenience store. When I worked as an attendant and shop helper, we had to climb up on top of the delivery trucks to make sure they were fully loaded and then check that the compartment was empty before we would sign for the gasoline. Slippery. Sometimes took a while to get down and customers might be waiting.
I love the illustrations, and that whole long-gone genre of painted advertising art.
Is this the same Bill/William Campbell? (signature seems similar, but who knows?–happy to delete if I’m off course here.)
https://www.oldmodelkits.com/blog/plastic-model-kit-history/a-biography-of-bill-campbell-box-artist-for-hawk-plastic-model-kits/
On the subject of old Autocars, YouTuber Diesel Creek is based in SW Pennsylvania and has a 1957 Autocar tractor he is gradually restoring
and also just bought 1980 Autocar tractor
He’s also got a collection of older construction equipment and several videos from antique machinery shows.
When I was a kid, looking out the rear side window of the car, I was tickled by the name “Autocar”. It seemed like an ideal, perfect name for a motor vehicle.
I love the artwork, and the use of colour. And the sheer style of the COE models – I hadn’t seen them before. Did gas company drivers really wear uniform like that once? They almost look like policemen!
The name always made me think of the British magazine though.
Here’s a much later model. 🙂
The gasoline company uniforms appear to be accurate for the brands portrayed. Worked at several dealers in the late 1960’s, early 70’s. By then, things were less formal. We were issued baseball style caps. Didn’t usually wear mine though.
Wonderful collection!
The one below seems to be from the same era, once owned by a nearby hauling company. (source, and a few more: https://www.oudetrucksenmeer.nl/autocar/nggallery/autocar/autocar-1)
Gotta love how, much like hand-painted car ads of the day, the vehicle is rendered larger than life to make the cab seem spacious. IRL pics seem to indicate the cab was barely 70″ wide.
Great gallery and lots of tankers, Im driving tankers at the mo so some of these speak to me not the easiest freight, its a live load, forget that and it soon tells you, the load will take over the driving if things are done wrong and that gets rather messy, THe only Autocar I can remember seeing was in a museum not a well known make here
Great looking trucks, especially the COE models. Where did they all go though? They weren’t in Colorado wrecking yards 30-50 years ago. The artists of these advertisements all deserved awards for this fine work.
Stunning artwork, and educational too: I learned the plural of “chassis” is “chasses”. By the way, one of the heavy haulers is from Bigge Drayage, now Bigge Crane and Rigging, a company that was started in my birthplace, Oakland California, in 1916. As a kid I always got a kick out of seeing Bigge equipment, because it was, well … big. They’re still headquartered in the East Bay and have a lot of photos of their old equipment on their website.
Perhaps I fell in love with Autocar trucks as a child in The Bronx, NY where we had coal delivered in pre-War Autocars. Then the day came when I was selling them. I loved selling Autocar trucks. Thanks for these ads. I occasionally see an Autocar running around in New Jersey or New York that I sold. They last.
Love the old ads. Great slogans, too – “Autocar Trucks cost more because they’re worth more” and “Follow the leaders, for they know where they’re going”. I’ve seen a few older Autocars still on the job, but the ones I’m most familiar with were the White/GMC models. Plus, Sylvester Stallone drove an Autocar in the 1987 film ”Over The Top”. Good to know the name is still around.
Speaking of movie trucks, I always thought the truck in Duel was an Autocar, but it’s actually a 1955 Peterbilt 281.
I kind of wished it would have been an Autocar, simply because it was a cooler name, and had a slightly more old-school ‘malevolent’ look about it.
Whenever I have a design student, I always show her/him some of the iconic Kaufman ads for Pontiac and the reaction is always “so cool!”
I have a design student tomorrow and I’ll definitely show these ads to her and I have no doubt she’ll love them. Good art is timeless.
Follow this link for more Autocar: http://dailydieseldose.com/category/autocar-trucks-2/
In the early to mid 50’s someone must have “helped” a transportation manager “select” the trucks that were used by the City of Chicago department or Streets and Sanitation as many, MANY garbage trucks were using the Autocar trucks as the base unit for all those Chicago Garbage trucks. More than likely there just might have been some “political involvement” in the selection of who the garbage truck manufacturer was going to be. I do remember just how noisy “Beast like” those trucks were. They seemed to be out of place for the job they were doing. Kind of like going to a shallow pond and “fishing with a hand grenade”—-over powered for what they had to do.
The one ad signed ‘Autocar of Ardmore’ stood out to me, not least because the company featured was Sunoco, another fine Philadelphia firm. I wonder if it was for a Philadelphia area publication, although I can’t imagine what local pub would have printed in color back then, even just the advertisements – some pubs did that back in the day.
It could have been a ‘corporate sponsor’ ad, made from the existing ad with the new strapline for placement in local event programs like the Devon Horse Show. I certainly made a few of those in my days as a copywriter.
Fun Fact: The famous VW ‘Think Small’ ad originally started as a corporate sponsor ad, ad was later reworked to be a consumer ad.