Being towed by a Willys Aero, no less.
Vintage Snapshot: The First U-Haul?
– Updated on August 4, 2025
-
-
-
American Brands: GM 
American Brands: Ford 
American Brands: Chrysler 
American Brands: AMC, Jeep and All Others 
Automotive Histories and Misc. 
Asian Brands 
UK Brands 
Australian Brands 
European Brands 
Cars Of A Lifetime & Auto-Biography 
Buses 
Trucks, Pickups and Vans 
Design 
Trains, Planes & Ships 
Motorcycles, Trikes, Bicycles 
Engines, Transmissions and other Tech 
Tractors, Lawn Mowers, Off-Road Equipment 
RVs, Motorhomes, Trailers, Campers
With the bumper-clamp trailer hitch, nonetheless!
How times have changed. Today, to haul that same trailer, you need at least a Ram 1500 with a Hemi, and preferably four wheel drive.
It’s enough to give us all the Willys. But back then any old F Head could handle a trailer. 🙂
To be fair, and this is probably dumb on my part, trying to tow anything with a unibody structure gives me the heebie-jeebies.
If I had a Panther or B-Body though, I’d have no problem.
Whether a vehicle has a unibody or BOF design by itself is not a factor in its suitability for towing. Big vans are unibody and can tow up to 10,000 lbs.
Are yo aware that all modern cars with perimeter frames (essentially all larger Ford and GM cars since about 1965) are really semi-unibodies? The perimeter frame is thin and only really reinforces mainly the sill area as well as make a convenient place to attach parts of the front and rear suspension to it. The majority of the car’s strength in many planes comes from the body itself. Perimeter frames are not anything like ladder frames used under trucks.
They probably charged $1 or $2 a day to rent that baby out, free hitch attachment included!
Back then, you would rent the trailer and the bumper attachment.
Today, its soo much easier to just rent the U-Haul van or box truck with the rear ramp.
What a big difference!!
My friend had a trailer rental shop in the 1960’s. He built all of the trailers. There were racks of bumper clamps for different shaped bumpers. They padded the clamps with strips of newspaper.
Lights were never hooked up for daytime use. Only the nicest trailers had any lights. Wires were pierced on the tow car; there were no connectors. There were a couple of dual axle trailers, but nothing as big as a car hauler.
They were for local use only. I don’t think there was any deposit, and it was too early for credit cards. Very rarely a trailer was not returned, and then the neighborhood was searched. It usually turned up.
Based on my experiences with U-Haul, that trailer is probably still in the fleet somewhere. 🙂
Haha! Too funny, too true.
Funny of the day!
High five JP!
My ex’s family moves constantly, r/t her mothers paranoia. (My ex went to 8 different schools between grades 1 through 12!) My ex father-in-law has joked, that when he dies, the flags at ALL U-haul dealers nationwide will fly at half-staff. And their stock price will drop !
Going by the Olds 98 in the background, I’d put this around 1953+?
The Willys could be ’52 or ’53… the car in front is a ’53 Dodge. Looks like a ’49 Olds 76 in the background?
The ‘aero’ shaped trailer is impractical. It’s tall in front, so you might try to stack more stuff there, but it’s much too low in back. You couldn’t put more than a couple mattresses in it securely.
The shape may be by design so that those unaccustomed to loading a trailer (i.e. renters) will load the trailer properly and not put most of the weight behind the wheels.
Good point. What struck me was how the trailer design with those shaped side boards looks pure late ’30s-40s cartoonish.
If you’re talking about the car in the driveway across the street, could be a 49 Olds, but I can’t tell.
BTW, my previous post about the big Olds in the street being 1953+ is wrong. Should have read 1953-.
I never realized how much resemblance there is between the Willys Aero and the 1956-58 Ford Consul Mark II, at least from the angle presented in the picture.
I’ve always thought that Willys could have had a long life in Europe (or Australia) if it could have been sold at a reasonable price, as that styling would have seemed still reasonably current through to the early sixties. Like that Consul.
Reminds me of the 1960’s when small trailers with bumper-clamped hitches were common. Weekly trips to the dump, moves of light, bulky items, a small load of gravel for the driveway potholes, or to mix concrete for masonry repairs. Ironically, most of those small, cheap trailers carried more cargo than 90% of the hefty, macho, passenger trucks were have now.
Matched with a roof-mounted rack carriers, the one with suction cups that clamped to the drip molding, the family car double as a hauler for many.
I was working at a gas station back in the early 1970s when I was in high school. Besides pumping gas, fixing flats, and doing oil changes I was also entrusted with renting U haul trailers. I not only wrote up the contracts, I would attach the clamp on trailer hitch and tie in the lights. I did the best I could but there were some pretty sketchy hook ups going out! I remember the time my cousin rented a horse trailer that was attached with a clamp on hitch to his Uncle’s new Olds Jetfire. He was driving down to Morgan Hill to pick up his newly purchased horse. Talk about a comedy of errors, but I’m sure his uncle didn’t get a laugh out of it.
First,he had failed to get the key to the locking gas cap and as we were in danger of running dry, he pried the cap off with a lug wrench. Then the horse decided that he didn’t want to ride in the trailer. The horse kicked back with both legs and tore the latch off the trailer door, almost hitting us! The ever resourceful rancher coiled around a hundred feet of rope around the trailer and door to secure it after he had calmed the animal down. My cousin failed to regularly check how tight the hitch clamps were and the assembly shifted, bending the hell out of the Old’s rear bumper. Luckily he dropped me off at my house so I was spared from the wrath of his Uncle. I’m sure it was the Uncle that had rented the trailer on his credit card. I suppose that he lost his status as the “favored” nephew.