Looking back: hard times, part 2

Interstate trucking was in its infancy then, and although pre-World War II gasoline engines and many poorly engineered “home made” trucks left a lot to be desired, trucking was headed for something better.

The Trucker News Services

10/21/2008

One day in 1937 Ed Crocker’s old truck broke down on him for the last time. On a lonely stretch of road, with a cold cloudburst coming down out of the November sky just when he lifted the hood, he went to the cab cussing and took his 30.06 Winchester and fired one point blank into the hood.

“Didn’t do no good,” Crocker laughed. “But it didn’t do any harm, either. It was a miserable piece of machinery that broke down all the time. I’d have been better off with a mule.”

Regulation helped give trucking stability during the Great Depression. And the country was being opened up to mobility with the planning, if not the construction, of better roads.

You might call the Great Depression — which lasted from 1930, not long after the Stock Market crashed, until December 7, 1941, when we got into World War II—a vital link in the evolutionary chain of American trucking.

The newly formed Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was given the power to regulate rates, entry, safety and accounting in the industry, beginning in 1935, bringing stability to an unsteady industry.

Mobility, better roads were on the horizon

“If I hadn’t driven a truck, or if the war hadn’t come along later, I don’t know if I’d have ever left Texas,” says Crocker, a retired trucker who now lives near Los Angeles.

Before the Depression, many Americans spent their entire lives within a 100-mile radius of their home towns. The Depression unpleasantly forced many folks to hit the roads. As farms and businesses failed, men and families drove, hitched and hoboed their way across country looking for something better. World War II gave even more young men their first looks at other parts of the country, as well as the world. And with the development of better roads and more dependable transportation, mobility eventually became an American habit and a national option.

One task of the Roosevelt-brainchild Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which helped put Americans back to work with government jobs, was that of building better roads. In the late 1930s, as it became clear to Roosevelt the U.S. was likely to become involved in another global war, he proposed and Congress approved an intricate system of national defense roads—four lane highways over which troops and military equipment could be easily and quickly transported wherever needed, from coast to coast.

These roads would also serve to evacuate mass segments of the population if attack made it necessary, always having two lanes open on each side, with no traffic coming the other way to slow things down. This system of national defense roads became our Interstate highway system.

But in the ‘30s, most roads were horrible. Highways were turtle-back roads, humped in the middle, allowing water to drain off at a 90 degree angle, causing trucks to flip almost as if on cue, even in dry weather.

Still, some roads improved. Many dirt goads were graced with gravel for better traction. More old roads got paved and more new roads were built.

Slow going, hard beds, bad food

These days, truckers take non-stop driving, 55 to 65 mph averages, good road food and nice motels for granted. But in the 1930s, it was hard going.

For example, a trip from Atlanta to New Orleans was 550 miles. But it took 15 hours to make the trip — that’s an average of just over 35 miles an hour — provided you didn’t break down. Because in those days, besides bad roads there were all those little towns you had to go through. No interstate highways, no bypasses, no way through populated areas except through the middle of town. You had to stop at every stop sign at every corner.

Seats were hard and uncomfortable compared to today’s truck seats. There was, of course, no air conditioning in the summer, although some truckers would rig up little dash fans. If you drove through the deserts, or most hot places in the summer, you did your driving at night, which was cooler but even more dangerous, because not only were the roads poor, they were ill lit and vision was always a problem. If you drove in the winter cold, you kept your coat on.

Driving a truck in the heat or the cold, or even in the best weather, was draining and tiring, and in 1937, the ICC passed a law that a driver couldn’t drive after 60 hours on duty in a seven-day period, or 70 hours in an eight-day period—out-dated rules today, but at the time it was a very good law.

The Hyatts, Holiday Inns and the like weren’t even a dream in those days. You might find a room at a “tourist court,” or something just called “cabins” along the route for a quarter or 50 cents a night during the Depression. The rooms were pretty stark--not much more than a hard bed and maybe a fan if you were lucky enough to find one in the stifling heat of summer. If you have seen trucks with early sleeper cabs from that era, you know that the sleepers were tiny and cramped. Imagine trying to catch a little shut-eye in one of those early sleepers in, say, Alabama in about mid-July.

The roadside diners and gas stations in those days were the forerunners of the modern truck stop. In the beginning, there was just a station and a couple of gas pumps. Maybe later the owner decided to serve up sandwiches or maybe cook hot meals. An enterprising proprietor might put up a couple of cabins next door to the station and diner.

That was the first generation of truck stops. The second generation evolved with the physical plant away from the diner and gas pumps (in the 1950s when PureOil, Skelly and a few other oil companies got into the business), moving into bigger buildings and adding touches like dormitory-type showers. The third generation truck stop came in the mid-1960s with the advent of the first million-gallon truck stops, upgrading the image considerably and adding things like private bathrooms and even exercise rooms. Now, the newest generation truck stops are evolving back to a more personalized concept. So, those old gas station/diners were actually the great-grandfathers of the great American truck stop network we know today.

Better shipping methods helped industry flourish

Shipping methods improved steadily in the 1930s, especially the shipping of certain perishables, such as poultry.

In the 1930s, a man named Jesse Jewell, out of Gainesville, Ga., started the perishable poultry hauling business as we know it today, with ice-pack hauling. Prior to ice-pack units — which were insulated vans that used wet and dry ice — chickens had to be shipped live.

That’s how cities got their poultry. When chickens were first shipped freshly killed, the heads and feet were cut off and the guts left in. The housewife would have to clean and dress them.