Trying to identify year of truck

[Guest xjoe]

Hello -

I'm trying to identify the year of this beer truck and was hoping that someone here might recognize it:

Any ideas?

[Guest oldthudman]

About 1925........And maybe a Federal Knight...................?????

[F&J]

can I go out on a limb and say it is from 14 to 17? I say that because it has gas lights

No idea on the make.

[Layden B]

Some trucks came with gas lamps well into the 1920s. No electrical system ( starter and generator) as the truck driver was expected to be stout enough to do the loading, unloading and be able to hand crank the engine. Of course no electrical system made the truck cheaper and more reliable!

[drwatson]

By deduction, ca. 1919 might be the year due to statement below I found googling "West Bend Brewing Co." http://lithiabeer.com/images/WBBrewingCo.pdf

"On April 7, 1919 Carl Pick (Andrew Pick’s son), Martin F. and Charles W. Walter and Ed Theilman founded the West Bend Lithia Company.

Sadly, a year later the brewery closed its doors due to the prohibition."

Edited March 6, 2013 by drwatson (see edit history)

[Guest xjoe]

Thanks for your replies everyone, your comments are most helpful! I don’t know anything about cars/trucks and couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess as to the year of this truck. The comment about the gas lights, for example – I had no idea. As to the point about gas lights being used on trucks in the 1920s, does the rest of the truck seem consistent with a 1920s truck? I’ve been examining truck photos on the web, and my sense is that the truck in the above photo is more rudimentary than 1920s-style trucks.

Are there other features of the truck that can be used for identification purposes? For example, is there anything significant about the roof? The reason I ask is that I have another photo of a group of people, and visible behind them is the roof of a truck that looks pretty much the same as the roof in the photo above. The people are in front of the truck, so the only part of the truck that is visible is the roof.

The observation about the West Bend brewing company is most interesting. I looked more at that website, and I’m inclined to think that 1919 is the latest year the truck could be from. According to the history of the brewery, it was known as the West Bend Brewing Company up to 1919, at which point it became the West Bend Lithia Company. The sign on the door of the truck reads West Bend Brewing Company. The sign in the back of the truck reads Lithia (which I didn’t realize before). However, according to the brewery’s history, Lithia was one of (the?) company’s beer brands that existed at least back to 1893. So that would appear to make the range of possible dates 1893 to 1919.

Also in my searching, I found an image of a GMC Model 16 A.A. ambulance used by the U.S. Army in 1916-17 (Model 16 A.A. Ambulance; standard with U.S. Army 1916-17. | Flickr - Photo Sharing!), and the front of that ambulance resembles the front of the truck in the photo above (at least to me it does). Might that provide any more clues?

[F&J]

Joe, the roof styling also seems to date it more in the mid teens IMO. That is one thing I spotted when I replied. The truck may well have been a used truck when the beer company started, as larger new trucks were VERY expensive.

GMC similarities are there, as I owned a 1916 GMC 41 (2 ton), which was not chain driven. I have a GMC book here somewhere.. I could be wrong, but I don't think the 16 was chain drive. The hood seems a bit too tall, also. GMC's normally had a cast iron "GMC" letters logo mounted on the sides of the lower triangular cowl piece, and I don't see it in the pic.

The pic more closely resembles the GMC model 31, compared to the model 16. The 31 would have a cast iron radiator, and the 16 was more car-like with a sheet metal shell over the radiator itself. The 16 had car like crowned fenders, and 31 and larger used the flatter truck style fenders. But the 31 was not chain driven either..

I would think the truck is 1.5 ton, or 1.25.. Does not look quite as beefy as a typical 2 ton truck.

I still think the year is 14-17,whatever the make is.

Unfortunately, the wooden wheels won't help date a somewhat smaller truck. If it was a 2-3 ton truck, most truck makers switched to cast iron wheels by the very late teens to very early 20s, but smaller models tended to use wood throughout the 20s. However, these smaller trucks with wooden wheels tended to have covententional air filled tires from the later teens and through the 20s.

Edited March 6, 2013 by F&J (see edit history)

[Layden B]

My comment was more directed to the lamps than year of the truck. I agree that the truck styling is later teens era.

[F&J]

Maybe try searching for "chain drive truck" instead?

I took a quick look in the 20-70 spotters guide, and not many were still chain by 1920. One listing was for Sterling which is well known as chaindrive through many decades. I saw that by 1920, their smaller tonnage trucks were already switched to gear drive, but the bigger, very heavy trucks were still chain.

So that complicates a search by makes, as if you found a certain year/make pic, but eliminated it as it shows a gear drive, that truck maker may have made both types of drives in that year/era, and you would not know it.

[Ben Popadak]

Oh Layden is just giving everybody a chance at identifying it first. Back a dozen years ago I swapped Layden a 1911/12 brass Ford sidelight for an earlier steering column for one of those trucks. I had the chassis with a rough steering column but there is no way I would have been able to identify it on my own if I just saw it at a flea market. Standing next to each other, yup they were the same. I only knew what it was because Layden told me.

Pretty sure the truck is 1914 Kisselkar.

[Guest xjoe]

Thanks for all of those great details F&J, that gives me a lot more information to search on.

Ben, I think you might be correct! Searching on 1914 KisselKar Truck yields a lot of information and images of features that are very similar, if not identical to the truck in the photo. Here is one interesting document from a Nov 17 1914 publication that illustrates the mechanics of the KisselKar truck:

Brick and Clay Record - Google Books

I especially love the part that reads, “Let us refer your name to our nearest agent. At the same time we will mail you our truck portfolio with 350 illustrations – it’s worth looking over.” Wow, 350 illustrations! Maybe the truck in the photo above is pictured in their portfolio...think they’ll mail me a copy of their portfolio if I request one?

Another compelling reason to think that KisselKar may be correct is that KisselKar was made in Hartford, WI, just 15 or so miles away from West Bend, WI, where the West Bend Brewing Company was located!

[Ben Popadak]

Going by memory alone, I haven't seen the magazine in years and I couldn't lay my hand on it very easily. On the back outside page of an AACA magazine, I think from the 1990s, there was an old photo of a 1914 Kisselkar chain drive truck if I remember right. Perhaps a reader could supply you a copy of the photo to compare to your photo.

Very few chain drive Kisselkars survived though there are a few fire trucks still left. My old 1913 chassis got cut up for it's engine and transmission. Too bad, she was the last of her year and size.

[Guest xjoe]

Very good memory Ben! I'll see if I can locate a copy of the magazine. Thanks a lot for the lead!

[Guest xjoe]

My local library has the AACA magazine, and I was able to look through all of the issues from the 1990s except four (they were missing most from 1997). The back cover of the Jul/Aug 1990 issue has this photo of a 1915 Kissel truck:

And here I tried to zoom in on the underneath, which is difficult to see because of the shadowing:

If this truck had a chain drive, presumably it would be on the side not shown in the photo, given that the chain on the truck in the first photo that I posted was on that side?

I’ve also got a follow-up question about components of trucks more generally from the time period. Previously I mentioned another photo that I have in which the roof of a truck is visible amongst a group of men. Here is a closeup of that photo side by side with the first photo:

The roofs of both trucks look identical to me, and they both have curved bars on either side at the back of the passenger cab. A photo of a 1914 KisselKar truck on shorpy.com whose roof and other components are different from these two has the same curved bar [Parcel Post: 1914 | Shorpy Historical Photo Archive]. The photo in which only the roof of the truck is visible was taken in La Crosse, Wisconsin, so it has the same Wisconsin connection as the West Bend Brewing Company truck. My question is this: is there any reason to doubt that the truck in the La Crosse picture is the same year and model as that in the West Bend picture? What I don’t know about cars is whether different car manufacturers used distinctively different components/designs or whether things like the roof had a generic design that could have been used by multiple manufacturers.

[nzcarnerd]

Chain drive vehicles always had a chain on each side. Truck chassis were as often as not supplied in bare chassis form and the bodywork built by a local coachbuilder to the specification of the new owner.

[Guest xjoe]

Interesting, thanks for that information nz! I guess I was assuming that the chain would have been on just one side, like a bicycle.