The mid 1930s ushered in the streamlined era, and trucks of all sorts were not immune to the new trend. To have a custom built streamlined truck or deliver van was seen as a way to advertise that your company was with the times, a rolling billboard folks were more likely to look at.
If the driver sits way back there, what’s the giant void area in the front for?
if you look through the windows you can make out the hood and top of radiator.
The streamlined cab looks simply like a sheet metal enclosure that fits over a stock 1936 Ford truck. Still, it’s rather attractive and certainly different.
In my hunch it’s not a commercial chassis, but rather a 1936 Fordson tractor inside that steering house.
That was my thought too, Hey! That’s a tractor inside there!”
Just looking at that inner hood line in the cab, with the placement of the steering wheel just so. And that narrow front track. But then perhaps the wheelbase as long as it is, is still customized and or glommed up along with commercial chassis bits aft?
So perhaps some truthiness in the caption’s claim.
I want to hear about the day it was pulling a long grade and overheated. lol
Reading the fine print that this was from Canada, the “biscuits” word makes sense now – cookies and candies is what the Yank version would say. Biscuits go with gravy or fried chicken, not candies. 🙂
FWIW, nowadays Canadian usage of “biscuits” has aligned with the American one.
I will not be dipping my Hob Nobs or Jammy Dodgers in gravy, thank you!
This is the not the American McCormick company that specializes in spices and flavourings, but a Canadian Company based In London Ontario that was actually named “The McCormick Biscuit and Candy Company”.
In news from Oz, it might hardly raise an eyebrow* to know that not only did biscuits never go in the gravy unless by some accident, the sweet cuppa-tea adjacent things are universally known as “bikkies”.
*(Everything that exists here ends up with a diminutive, many ending in “-ie/ey”, eg: postman=postie, fireman=firey, bricklayer=brickie, ad infinitum).
I’m quite certain that this is, just as stated, a truck, not a Fordson tractor as some one speculated. Since all the rims match, the location of the rear axle relative to the operator’s seat and the position and angle of the steering column is truck-like, and no Fordson of that vintage had an engine hood shaped like the one we can just see over the top of the falsework and they had steel wheels as well, the compelling evidence is that the “commercial chassis” was probably what I believe was known as a “flat-cowl chassis” which had nothing rearward of the steering wheel from the factory, The body manufacturer would have provided the rest of the vehicle, from the windshield to the driver’s seat to whatever body was ordered. Flat-cowls formed the basis for school buses, bookmobiles, “bread” trucks, and so on. I don’t think I ever remember one being used as a truck-tractor with a fifth wheel trailer, but exclusively as straight trucks of one form or another. With the volume of the operator’s area, I can’t imagine this being anything but a fair weather vehicle, since I can’t envision either enough heat or enough defrost capability to use this rig in a Canadian winter. Nevertheless, what effective advertising in a era when aircraft influence and streamlining were omnipresent.
Something like this Ford tractor unit? (the semi-trailer is a DAF Unloader, dating back to the mid-thirties)
Its a truck chassis probably supplied how we got them here complete to the windscreen and the enclosed body built out over the front sheetmetal, thats different it doesnt resemble a cabover, Local food suppliers used to have nicely detailed delivery trucks but by the time I started doing that work the paintwork had devolved down mere signwriting the pictures were gone.
I remember Top Gear loved to give americans crap for our doghouse tractor trailers versus the common cab over engine design they prefer. This would be double doghouse length for sure. One would simply plow rather than drive through traffic. You would need a pilot sitting forward on the hood as a spotter.
By the way I much prefer a digestive over a graham cracker any day but they just never caught on over here.
“Travelling Warehouse for Your Convenience” Sort of like the Snap-On truck…of cookies.
That last sentence of the ad’s caption/text is also interesting:
Seems like someone may have had a bit of an axe to grind there.
Quite wonderful. How’d our roadscape now look if even just a few more companies gave style a go on their big rigs?
Unless there’s a periscope somewhere you’d have to stop a half-mile away to see an overhead stoplight.