J.L. Hudson's delivery trucks

[Ed Golick]

Does anybody know the make and model of home delivery trucks that Hudson's used in the 1950s and 60s? I've looked in the two Hudson's books and on the web, but have come up empty.

[jgavrile]

I am pretty sure they were made by Ford

[Ragtoplover59]

"It has been a long time since large, electric trucks were seen on American streets. In the first half of the 20th century they were popular with major department stores for silently delivering large items in cities. I remember seeing big green Walker electric trucks complete with solid rubber tires in downtown Detroit where they were used by the J.L. Hudson department store until the late 1950s. Walker introduced a series hybrid gasoline-electric truck called the Dynamotive in 1938 and manufactured them until 1942."

Taken from this page/site
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n24381330/

[Sstashmoo]

Divco maybe? They weren't a common brand like Chevrolet or Ford if I remember correctly. They looked just like a UPS truck. The lady across the street where I grew up had one of those trucks at her house every two days it seemed.

[Ed Golick]

Not DIVCOS and not electric.

[softailrider]

I remember they were dark green.

[Stosh]

I remember they were dark green.

Could they have been AMC? Seems to me that, since AMC picked up the Hudson Motor Car company, it would have been a fit for them. This truck is similar in appearance to the trucks used. Looks like an AMC logo on the front

[Stosh]

Never mind. Looks like this one?

[Ed Golick]

Stosh,
Yes, that's it! What is it?

[jjaba]

Stoch, great posts. Quality research. Your second photo looks like much of the Eastside I am told. Don't know, never been there.
jjaba.

[jjaba]

By the 1950s, Hudsons had 300 delivery trucks and 500 drivers. You could shop downtown all day and have deliveries made to distant places like Romeo and Holly, Michgan. In March of 1954, Hudson's opened Northland Center in Southfield, Michigan with 10,500 parking spaces and the whole geography and shopping calculus changed forever.
jjaba, all's you need to know about Hudson's delivery trucks.

[Stosh]

They say it's a Ford. But I see no logo.

http://www.usedtrucklistings.com/Lis...livery%20Truck

[thecarl]

not the hudson's truck, but the walker design and engineering is rather appealing!

http://www.jcristmuseum.org/walker.SHTML

[thecarl]

stosh, no logo - but definitely a recognizable ford grille design!

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1955-f...100-pickup.htm

[buildingsofdetroit]

not the hudson's truck, but the walker design and engineering is rather appealing!

http://www.jcristmuseum.org/walker.SHTML

I'm not an auto enthusiast, but those things are amazing. What an incredible restoration!

[old guy]

Maybe not the same year, but it looks pretty close.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqJB9YMgzBY

[Stosh]

stosh, no logo - but definitely a recognizable ford grille design!

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1955-f...100-pickup.htm

Yes it is. Good catch.

[Lowell]

Great post and image Stosh! This is right up my alley as I passed the seventies as on and off Sears delivery-driver. [I was a history graduate student who I 'quit school forever' to be an artist... and drove truck for the next eight years. lol]

Hudson drivers were fellow Teamsters, but of a different local. All their trucks were a deep forest green. The truck above was a one man package delivery van. Their two man appliance / furniture delivery trucks were short semis.

Hudson delivery-drivers were known for their skill using four-wheelers, [like this but with a center rectangle cut out], and hump straps. They somehow thought it beneath them to use the later developed two-wheel creeper aka appliance dollies and probably blew out a lot of backs because it meant they carried, rather than rolled, large items up and down stairs.

Hudson's owned and maintained their own delivery fleet, unlike the other big retailers who contracted delivery out to delivery companies.

It was a great occupation when you are young and strong and, back then, had great union wages as well. Each day you loaded a truck, left the boss behind, and went off on an adventure to somewhere inside the triangle of Port Huron - Chelsea - Monroe.

It was a great education on Detroit as I worked in all of the some 100 communities of greater Detroit, and entered the homes of the poorest and richest and of every ethnicity and religion. Most of the job was riding and I traveled on every major mile road in the metro many times each and drove on every street over two blocks long in Detroit. The experience was the source of my Detroit interest and concern.

Hamtramck and Southwest Detroit were the toughest with their narrow streets and 'around the back and up' double-decker houses and winding narrow basement stairways. But the people there were also the nicest, down-to-earth working class people who appreciated your effort. The easiest were the one-floor 'Monopoly House' houses in post-war subdivisions like those in Garden City and Warren.

[jjaba]

Lowell, Warren and Garden City are either post-war cottages or Mid-Century modernist California ranch houses. You may have driven around out there in the great beyond singing Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes Made of Ticky Tacky", but nobody thought they were living in 'Monopoly Houses' as you put it.

Secondly, with all your knowldge, who lives at 14032 Northlawn, Detroit 4, Michigan, jjaba's boyhood crib? Answer the trvia, win a prize.

jjaba, Dexter Blvd. Torah Bukkor on the Far Westside.

[Crystal]

My Dad's first job was working in the shipping department at Hudson's. Dad would have been a teenager [[born 1917) and he earned 25 cents an hour. He wrote the route number on each package to be delivered by a Hudson's truck.

In the late 1980's Dad was proud that he could still recite, in order, the street names of every route!

[faygoredpop]

I know that this is not the copy of the pictures you are looking for, but I found this on the DetroitHistorical.org site It's a picture of a replica 1881 J L Hudson delivery wagon that they used for deliveries on their 75 anniversary.

[East Detroit]

Stosh's delivery van posted above was I think the Ford Vanette.
Prior to that was the walk-in version of the F series.

Here are a couple of links, but now that you have the name, Google will show you many versions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqJB9YMgzBY

http://imcdb.org/vehicles.php?make=F...elInclModel=on

[Bullet]

From the DY archives posted by Mikeg:

http://grobbel.org/photos/slides/cro...st_oct1956.jpg

http://grobbel.org/photos/slides/mon...k_june1968.jpg

Found here:

http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/...tml?1224199937

One needs to look close, but here are some delivery trucks as seen in the glory days of Detroit.

[jjaba]

Great story Crystal. There are many professions such as taxi drivers, tour guides, ambulance drivers, police, and commerical drivers and warehousemen who have huge knowledge of the city. Growing up in Detroit with parents with huge street smarts was a wonderful gift to us.
Unless jjaba is trying to navigate in leafy suburbs or the North woods, he seldom gets lost.

jjaba, Dexter Blvd. Bar Mitzvah Bukkor.

[Burnsie]

When did Hudson's stop making deliveries with its own trucks?