Trucking Industry had its inception in France about 1769 with Nicolas J. Cugnot's experimental artillery tractor. It was introduced in America in the nineteenth century, but neither the times, nor the technology, nor the roads were prepared for such an innovation, and the occasional builders of experimental vehicles received little encouragement for their efforts, particularly given the stellar successes of the rail industry in transporting heavy goods.
In the 1890s numerous experimental motor vehicles began to appear throughout the country, and among them were a few motor wagons. A few commercial motor vehicles reached the market during the last three years of the century. Like the passenger vehicles that were widely known as "horseless carriages," these earliest motor wagons resembled their horse-drawn predecessors, with their motors and other machinery suspended under their bodies. This design prevailed through the first decade of the twentieth century. Because the heavy machines were limited to short hauls on paved urban roads, the nascent trucking industry favored the more reliable electric wagons over those powered by as-yet-crude gasoline or steam engines. No early trucks were very efficient or reliable, however, and most carried only small loads. Consequently, people found them most valuable as advertisements, because of their novelty. Inexperienced drivers, who abused and neglected the vehicles, the general conservatism of the business world, and inadequate design all retarded the use of motor trucks during these years.
By 1910, improvements in truck design had begun to break down the conservative bias against the new vehicles, and increased profits for the manufacturers enabled more rapid development. Following innovations first worked out in the passenger-car market, vertical four-cylinder engines, located under a hood in front of the driver, began to replace the single-cylinder and double-opposed engines. Sliding gear transmissions superseded planetary transmissions and the less efficient friction transmissions. During the period 1913–1915, there was a noticeable trend away from chain drive in favor of several forms of gear drive.
Important developments of 1912 were the tractor and semi trailer, the former having been introduced for use with the many serviceable wagons designed to be drawn by horses, the tractor and its rear wheels replacing the horses and front wheels of the wagons. Truck use increased rapidly during that decade. The production of 25,000 trucks in 1914 tripled in 1915, and total registrations of 99,015 in 1914 rose to 1,107,639 by 1920. Poor rural roads and the 15 mile per hour maximum speed of these solid-tired trucks kept most of these vehicles confined to city streets.
World War I and its aftermath had an immense effect on truck use and development. The immediate need for trucks by the military and the army's truck-standardization program focused the attention of truck engineers on component design and furthered the cause of the assembled truck as against the manufactured truck. As the railroads became woefully congested and inefficient because of the tremendous increase in traffic when the United States entered the war in 1917, Roy Chapin's Highway Transport Committee of the Council for National Defense experimented with the first long-distance truck shipments, sending trucks bound for overseas military use under their own power from midwestern manufacturing centers to eastern seaports, primarily Baltimore. At that time, too, pneumatic tires capable of withstanding heavy truck loads were being developed; previously pneumatic tires had rarely been used on anything heavier than a three-quartert on truck. When the improved tires became available, they enabled trucks to double their former speed, an enormous advantage and a practical necessity for intercity trucking. Immediately after the war the good-roads movement began to achieve major results as the federal-aid system began to develop, resulting in the dramatic expansion of the nation's hard-surfaced highway system over the next two decades.
Interstate trucking increased steadily during the 1920s along with the new road system. As the decade closed such developments as power-assisted brakes, six-cylinder engines, and three-axle trucks began to contribute to the safety and efficiency of highway operation. The lean years of the early 1930s had some adverse effects on trucking, but there was also some progress, as the use of the semi trailer, better adapted to heavier loads, increased 500 percent from 1929 to 1936. Likewise, in the early 1930s cooperative trailer-switching arrangements between carriers permitted through service by eliminating the extra freight handling that shifting loads from truck to truck had previously required and, at the same time, led to standardization in size, fifth wheels, brakes, and other new components. The diesel truck, introduced in the early 1930s, was not found in significant numbers until the 1950s.
The shortages of steel, rubber, and gasoline during the war years of the 1940s curtailed the growth of motor freighting, but trucks served as a mobile assembly line on the home front and were often the decisive factor in the theaters of war, causing Gen. George S. Patton to remark, "The truck is our most valuable weapon." After the war the trucking industry resumed a steady and rapid growth. An important development of the late 1950s and 1960s was "piggybacking" or "intermodal" shipping—the long-distance movement of loaded semi trailers on railway flatcars; 1,264,501 semi trailers were loaded on flatcars in 1970. Intermodal trucking activity increased even more dramatically in the 1980s, following the 1980 Staggers Act, which weakened the Interstate Commerce Commission's regulatory control over railroads, and the 1980 Motor Carrier Act, which partially deregulated trucking. As a result, the number of piggybacking semi trailers jumped by 70 percent between 1981 and 1986. The 1991 Inter-modal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) further boosted intermodal shipping.
The last three decades of the twentieth century saw a large increase in highway trucking as well, in large part due to the rapid construction of the 42,500-mile system of interstates begun in 1956, which facilitated the use of larger trucks carrying heavier loads at lower per-mile cost. By 1970 the national truck total of 18,747,781 more than tripled the 1941 figure. Following the deregulation of the truck industry in 1980, the number of licensed carriers grew from 17,000 to over 40,000 by 1990. In addition, the number of carriers with permission from the ICC to operate on a nationwide basis grew from under 100 in 1980, when operating rights sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, to an unprecedented 5,000 carriers in 1990.
Bibliography
Automobile Manufacturers Association. Motor Truck Facts. New York: Annually, 1935–1975.
Denham, A. F. Twenty Years Progress in Commercial Motor Vehicles (1921–1942). Washington, D.C.: Automotive Council for War Production, 1943.
Karolevitz, Robert F. This Was Trucking: A Pictorial History of the First Quarter Century of Commercial Motor Vehicles. Seattle, Wash.: Superior, 1966.
Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association. Motor Vehicle Facts and Figures. Detroit, Mich.: Annually 1975–current.
U.S. Department of Transportation. America's Highways, 1776–1976: A History of the Federal-Aid Program. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977.
Encyclopedia of American History Copyright © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
