The Story of the Growth of the Motor Truck[57]
While exact dates are not easily obtainable, it is thought to be quite within the bounds of reasonable accuracy to say that the motor truck only began to be recognized as a practical vehicle for commercial purposes in 1905.
Today motor vehicles, both pleasure and commercial, are such a common sight in every city and town, and even throughout the rural districts, that one can scarcely believe that they were a novelty such a little time ago.
One of the Earliest Gasoline Trucks
The statistics show, however, that in 1906 the total registrations of both pleasure and commercial vehicles, as reported by the various states, was 48,000—about one month’s production today of one well-known pleasure-car maker.
In 1915 the registrations totaled nearly 2,500,000, and every day has added to the number.
It can be truthfully said that the pleasure car is the father of the truck or commercial car.
The application of the internal combustion engine to the use of propelling vehicles was the beginning of a new era in that world. The idea, born, one might say, with the new century, has already done more to revolutionize transportation than all of the inventions of all the centuries that have gone before.
The automobile, first looked upon as a freak, then “a rich man’s plaything,” has in a few years come to be recognized as a necessity, and literally millions of people are employed in its production and dependent on the industry for support.