6 days Ago By [email protected] (rych mills)
Cars had the photo spotlight last week, but now trucks are on the Flash from the Past highway. The first gas-powered contraptions to scare Waterloo County horses were cars, but soon came trucks — larger, smellier, noisier ..
. and more useful. A) Oscar Thompson took over Kitchener’s Ford dealership at 12 College St.
(behind today’s Shoppers Drug Mart) in 1919. Not long after, Thompson and his grease monkeys celebrated a holiday at their banner-bedecked building. By dialing 85, you could have Thompson’s truck No.
2 rushing to tow, replace batteries or repair tires. Thompson sold the business to Hall and McKie in 1926 and took up fox farming. Model TT Ford trucks were sold as a simple cab on a chassis and purchasers could mount a custom designed box.
B) Loaded down with bundles of animal skins, the brand-new truck of Kitchener’s Breithaupt Leather Company shivers at the tannery near Adam Street. Louis Breithaupt opened his firm in 1857 and for six decades teams of horses with wagons did this job ..
. taking much longer. Inside this truck, there’s a Dodge engine but the truck itself was called Graham.
In the 1920s, Graham Brothers made all trucks sold as Dodges. C) Fire trucks with lights flashing and sirens screaming ..
. but no fire! In March 1956, Kitchener Fire Department Pumper No. 4 had lights and sirens on, but also a cargo of hockey players.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen seniors were returning from Cortina, Italy, where they captured the Olympic bronze medal in games played outdoors on a sloping ice surface. Five thousand people and the Band of the Scots Fusiliers jammed city hall square. This pumper was made in Woodstock by Bickle-Seagrave in the early 1950s.
D) The Huras brothers, Edwin and Eckhardt, acquired, separately, Waterloo Spring Company and Kitchener Spring ...
both firms based in Waterloo. Then in 1939, Edwin moved Waterloo Spring to Kitchener and we had the humorous situation of Waterloo Spring in Kitchener and vice versa. Waterloo Spring’s shiny postwar Mercury truck is probably a 1946 model and may have been the first new company vehicle since before the war.
E) Coca-Cola trucks were always an attraction. Just watching the driver haul those heavy wooden crates off the stack and hoping one might drop and we could beg a free bottle. Coke drivers were required to polish their trucks each morning.
Around 1937, this Galt Coke driver paused near Tait and Francis streets for a snapshot while leaning on his gleaming red truck ...
red but White. Cleveland’s White Motor Car Company began in 1898 with steam-powered cars but eventually became a leading bus, tractor and truck firm. Four decades later, White trucks made up a good portion of Coca-Cola’s fleet.
F) The sun is shining brightly early on a Saturday morning in the early 1960s and Kitchener farmers market is at its best. From nearby city hall, the Record photographer captured dozens of cars, vans, station wagons and pickups backed up to the elevated sidewalks, where customers bought vegetables right from the growers. What a collection! In the front row, from left, Studebaker pickup, Volkswagen van, Ford truck, International pickup, Ford pickup, Chevy station wagon, Chevy truck, large Ford stake truck, unidentifiable and finally a Fargo panel truck.
You can work out the other 100 or so vehicles! This mixture of vehicles is a suitable wrap-up for the brief two-part cars ’n’ trucks Flash from the Past. I greatly appreciate Kirk Blake-Dickson’s help in identifying them..
