(Updated 6/6/2026) Summer time is technically not quite here, but it sure feels like it. Maybe a Hot Dog is in order? How about one from this 1950’s Ford Parcel Delivery? Whether hauling bread, parcels, or—as its current owner suggests—perhaps even hot dogs, these purpose-built workhorses spent their lives making deliveries rather than turning heads. That makes survivors like this one particularly fascinating today; they’re forgotten machinery that served neighborhoods, businesses, and Main Streets across the country
More recently, food trucks have been quite the fad over the past few years in the Bay Area, as they offer a low-investment way for entrepreneurs to peddle their wares. There have been food truck festivals, and weekly food truck nights at places like The Oakland Museum of California, and food trucks regularly visit various drinking establishments that lack their own kitchen. None of that now in the midst of the Covid-crisis, maybe sometime soon I hope, for all involved.
I actually love hot dogs, I made my way through undergraduate and graduate school on a steady diet of hot dogs, yogurt, oranges, and V-8 juice. All 4 food groups! So much so that my mother once bought me for my birthday a “Hot-Diggity-Dogger”, toasts the buns and the dogs all at once! Of all things this ingenious device was/is manufactured in France.
These days, I’m trying to eat a lot less meat in general, on the way to no meat at all. To my dismay, though technology has with the “Impossible Burger” and its competitors created a passable plant-based burger substitute, so far all the faux-hot-dogs I have sampled have tasted way too much like plastic.
That’s a handy place to carry your spare. I’ve always known these as Step-Vans, though apparently that term was only used by Chevy, others called them Parcel Delivery Vans, Bread Trucks, Route Delivery Trucks and Multi-Stop Delivery Trucks. Notice the expansive step, for your Step-Van pleasure.
It’s pretty utilitarian inside. I doubt the seat is even adjustable fore-and-aft. Sometimes platform shoes can be a functional accessory.
The above brochure is from 1954. I contacted the owner of D.O.G., this is what he said: “Hi Jerome, the vin # identifies it as a ’56’ some customers swear it’s a “64”. I’m going with the VIN. Also the VIN says it’s a P500 heavy duty cuz it’s got the duallies. It has the mighty 223 in line six. Woefully underpowered for the weight I put in there. The guy I bought it from said it was originally a Hostess bakery delivery van. Hope that’s helpful!” I haven’t been able to find a brochure from 1956, but these trucks changed very little over the years.
According to Coachbuilt.com, many if not most of these were built by Vanette of Delaware, Ohio, which began manufacturing parcel-delivery trucks on Ford chassis in 1939, with distribution through Ford shortly afterwards. Ford Parcel-delivery trucks were re-designated the P-series sometime in 1953, perhaps as 1954’s since the above brochure from 1954 says “New”, and I haven’t been able to find anything from 1953. It was available either as a totally stripped chassis, or as a cowl/windshield-and-chassis version, as in the featured Dog-Delivery-Device.
It turns out the body on this particular example was NOT built by Vanette, but rather by Williamsen of Ogden, Utah. The owner of D.O.G. kindly sent me this photo of the builder’s nameplate.
Williamsen began in 1892 and is still in business today as Williamsen-Godwin
They have had some innovative truck bodies over their history, including this interesting refrigerated and insulated semi-trailer.
They are still making truck bodies to this day, concentrating mostly on dump bodies like this interesting semi-elliptical “Super-Dump”.
Trucks specialized for route delivery was pioneered by Divco, which began producing multi-stop delivery trucks on its own chassis way back in 1926.
There’s a P-series making its way across one of the new-fangled interstate highway overpasses in the above 1957 Ford Trucks Full Line brochure. If you look closely you’ll see that “1957 Parcel Delivery chassis now feature V-8 as well as Six power!”
1960 P-series features more of the same, the trusty 223 six or the 292 V-8, but now with Cruise-O-Matic available across the whole line.
1961 trucks feature the usual P-350, P-400 and P-500, plus a new low-end P-100 series.
Nothing’s changed in 1962. Bread is bread, diapers are diapers, multi-stop delivery trucks have no need to change.
And here they are in 1965 – notice the change in grilles – something’s up.
Ford stopped producing anything except a totally stripped chassis in 1964. Soon after, various corporate maneuvers resulted in the takeover of Divco operations by the owners of Vanette, and subsequently ceasing Vanette production in favor of Divco trucks, which continued to be built in limited numbers until 1986.
A long, long run, however – almost as long as a Dodger Dog! In the Bay Area, of course, those aren’t held in such high regard. No matter, Ya got yer Ford, ya got yer Dogs, ya got yer Summertime fun. Are you looking forward to some Hot-Dogs this summer?
This brings back memories of seeing this kind of truck everywhere, and not just brown and delivering Amazon boxes. I still remember the Divco milk truck from Berkeley Farms coming by our house with glass bottles. I’m sure we never had a UPS or FedEx delivery … did they even do residential deliveries in the sixties or seventies? And the only food trucks were ice cream trucks. But these vans were hauling bread and produce, and even used by some tradesmen.
UPS and FedEx didn’t really become national until the mid 70s. Before that, a variety of local and regional companies did residential deliveries. Railway Express was the most national. Some of the regional companies started with specific purposes then generalized to carrying other small packages. For instance, Mistletoe Express began by distributing the Daily Oklahoman newspaper across the state. EFD began by distributing feature films to small-town theaters.
I’ve always referred to these types of vehicles as Step Vans as well — never realized that the term was in fact a Chevy-specific name.
There seem to be quite a few vintage step vans being used as food trucks (not quite as old as this one, though). It makes economic sense, especially for small businesses/entrepreneurs, and they’re so common I’ve wondered whether there are companies that rescue decrepit old vans and fix them up mechanically so the could be put back in service as food trucks.
Yes Step Van was a GM owned trademark for their stripped chassis used for building Walk-In trucks. For many years those badges, that also denoted the chassis series, were included in the box of loose parts with the things like the headlight bezels, marker and turn signal lights. So you’ll find that badge on bodies from different mfgs, while some apparently just tossed them instead of putting them on the truck.
What is interesting is that GM and Ford both used the P-series designation for the stripped chassis vehicles concurrently.
Ford eventually rolled them into the F-series and are the only one still producing them uninterrupted as the F-53 for building motorhomes and F-59 for building Walk-In trucks. They also still offer the E-350 and E-450 stripped chassis for building Walk-Ins or Motorhomes.
Ford was unusual in offering the cowl and windshield version of their stripped chassis, it of course made sure that they were recognized as Fords with a strong family resemblance to the F-series at their time of introduction.
I saw an F Series chassis-cab with a box body, in the familiar UPS brown, on a rural road in Northern California last year. It’s an area that gets a lot of snow and it was 4wd. I wonder if those routes will switch to 4wd Transits. I feel like it was the only “long nose” and 4wd UPS delivery truck I’ve ever noticed.
Out in one of the more remote parts of my state, back in the late 80’s UPS used Econoline Cargo vans that had been converted to 4wd. Apparently they ran larger trucks near the area and then transferred the packages to the Econlines for the “last mile” I assume the large truck serviced a couple of the last mile rigs.
So yeah it wouldn’t surprise me if they purchased some of the new 4wd Transits for those kind of locations.
What’s interesting is that in the ’60s, Ford offered the P Series with their 220 CID diesel, from the UK. I didn’t know that until I saw reference to it in the owner’s manual for my ’66 F100. I wonder how many they sold?
Making a whopping 70hp according to the brochure and available in the Class 5 version with a 3sp!
First thought – a UK Commer BF
Those screen grilles on the mid 60s look completely unfamiliar and unFordian. I doubt that Ford sold many of those. Most van users were buying and modifying Econolines by then.
Those grilles in the 1965 brochure are customer-designed ones, since with the cessation of “cowl-and-windshield” production at the end of 1964, there were no “Ford Grilles” provided, just the bare chassis.
Ford apparently used the 55 grill insert on the P500 from 1955 through at least 1960.
Through at least 1962 (see the brochure insert above), and probably through the end of cowl-and-windshield production in 1964.
A vehicle I never knew existed. Thanks to all the CC contributors, it’s getting harder harder to find an unknown these days!
Here in Australia all our parcel vans came from Britain back then, except for some local Internationals. Ford had the Thames, GM the Bedford, and Chrysler acquired the Commer when they bought out Rootes.
I enjoyed the writeup, and learned a lot. I do wonder if the “food truck” thing will cycle out as a fad before too long—who knows?
The 1956 brochure has the two wheelbase choices, but still only the 6-cyl. engine; though horsepower up to 133 (vs. your 115 for 1954).
The front end reminds me of the “Mister Softee” ice cream trucks of my youth, but I can’t swear to it. A ’56 would have been less than a decade old when I was a prime-age customer, so seems likely.
Did not know these existed. they do resemble the International Metro a bit, but the Metro just seemed to have a few more styling touches that make it more appealing today.
This is how you cook hot dogs, electrocute them.
GM P-series, pie vans, step vans. Throw a Gruman body on it and you really had a tough vehicle. Our local newspaper used them for distribution. Bodies were aluminum with aluminum castings tying things together in the corners. Real basic and noisy but tough. Only problem they had was drivers overspeeding the engines. No governors and the gearing was a bit steep, 4 speed manual trans. Drivers would probably push speed to 80 and engines were really screaming.
Funny, I had a GM Gruman that started out as a diesel but ended up Big Block Chevy by the time I owned it. I’m not sure of the displacement. The truck was not all that heavy, so between the big power and low rear cog, despite the sitting brick look, it would really git.
Nothing’ll pop a guy’s balloon like having the laundry truck outrun his sweet ride. LoL
It’s interesting how P trucks carried on with old tech as cab trucks moved on. I believe GMC used up the last of their sixes and Hydramatics in P trucks.
When F model Fords moved on, old tech beam axle, through-floor pedals, bell-housing “ear” engine mounts, etc., carried forward in P models.
Which brings up an interesting piece sort of seen in the ’65 chassis image. For ’65 P chassis retained the old carryover “ear mount” bell housing, but with the new 240/300 engine bolt pattern. Meanwhile F models moved on to block-side mounts. Thus the P housing would allow for easily marrying the ‘modern power’ of 240/300/289/302 etc. to your old F chassis, without a total reengineering.
Ford seems to have also sold F-series chassis cowls to body builders since I’ve seen a few 70s F-350s with parcel type bodies and sliding cab doors as well Good Humor trucks. Apparently some of these were used by railroads and other were crew buses.
The doggie “head shot” logo seemed familiar to me—it’s a “flipped” & slightly tweaked version of the classic Purina “Friskies” logo (1950s). I alerted Purina—but who knows if this matters to them. Still, Jeromesoldburg, if you ever see it replaced/modified, I’d be curious to know….
So why would you alert Purina about this?? seriously?
I’m thinking about selling my father’s p500 vanette. It’s running and was bought from the city of galveston in 61. My father passed last Friday. If I do sell it I hope it’s put to use. I haven’t been able to find a pic of one like his. His truck has been through every hurricane from 1961 to 2024. It’s also been registered and driving the same amount of time. My pops milled the head to give it more compression from what I remember. It definitely revs. Lol he has made alot of memories in that truck.
Ah, back in the days when truck was a truck, not a glorified car. A 115HP 6 cylinder engine to move a 14000 GVW truck? And probably gross HP, though perhaps not as inflated as it got in the late 60s. Yeah, it would get passed on the interstate, but so? Drivers wouldn’t like it, but as long as they got paid??? I admit, there is a frustration/satisfaction factor at work, it’s not just $$$/hr, and the cost of labor vs the cost of fuel might not work, but that’s what gears are for. Start out in low and work your way up.
Way back when, I had a job as a parts chaser for a VW repair shop. In a 36HP VW bus. Yeah, I was into V dubs, not muscle cars, but even so it was slow, really slow. I actually burst out into laughter one day when a city bus smoked me off the line, uphill into wind. Busses were slow in those days, he probably didn’t know we were racing, but to me we were. And I lost. Oh well. But the point is, gears and how fast do you need a delivery vehicle to be?
I miss P-Vans, our Municipal fleet had many, a few were built out when new as mobile mechanic’s trucks, very sturdy .
Boyertown also made incredibly stout aluminum bodies .
-Nate