Old Ford Trucks

• The 1905 Model C "Delivery Car" was Fords first production truck
  
  
• 1925 was the first production of a pick up truck by Ford, a Model T runabout with the optional pick up box
  
  
• The 1931 Model A trucks were available in 38 different colors
  
  
• The Ryder Truck fleet began with a single 1931 Model A pick up
  
  
• The first factory built Ford 4x4 was produced in 1959
  
  
• Ford's last "open-cab" pick up was built in 1934
  
  
• The F series pickup was introduced in 1948

VANADIUM HAUL
Ford Truck Times article by Joyce Rockwood Muench, mid 1950’s

"Sometime when you want to have a nice family chat about old Ford trucks, I suggest that you drop in to see Adolph J. Stampfel of the Rifle Auto Company in Rifle, Colorado. He can tell some stories that go to prove what you knew all along, on the matter of what Fords can take – and in this case, dish out as well.

There would be need enough for trucks to haul out produce and bring in supplies for this rich agriculture region, but that isn't all that concerns Rifle. One of the largest single bodies of vanadium ore is packed under overlying cliffs, from where it is being mined and taken down for processing by the United States Vanadium Corporation. Here’s work that just suits the Fords.

Mr. Stampfel does all the hauling of the ore and during the war he had as many as thirteen Ford trucks on the move, day and night. Vanadium has, as you know, several uses. It strengthens steel, fortifying the plates on battleships, to mention only one mighty important one.

The underground mine is reached by a gravel and dirt road which starts out at leisurely pace from above the town of Rifle, curving with valleys and brushing by farms and grazing land. Soon it makes for the hills, through great rocks standing on end, and skirts the Great Hogback before it attacks a hillside. Now the grade jumps to twenty-four percent, around several hairpin curves.

When you haul big loads and keep it up in every kind of weather, sometimes over ice and snow, soft with rain, slick with freezing weather – you need power and reliability. So Stampfel uses Fords. He can tell you that he has tried other makes, but even those having three times the capacity were unable to haul as much ore in a day as the two-ton Ford trucks.

He says that it just boils down to this – with a heavily loaded truck (they put over eight tons on the two-ton trucks) the motor has to turn over so fast, that no other make can stand up under it. He found that other trucks had to have chains for the hill work while the Ford truck drivers never bothered with them.”

Ford F100 Truck news from Ford.com

F-SERIES FORD MILESTONES AT A GLANCE

Read the timeline at ford.com

Henry Ford became enamored with vanadium in as early as 1906, while he was putting plans together for the Model T. While he was attending a race in Florida he took note of the wreckage of a French race car. He saw that it was made of a different kind of steel, the car parts were lighter, and soon learned that this new steel had almost three times the tensile strength of existing alloys being used by his competitors.

As no one in the USA knew how to make vanadium steel, he financed and set up a steel mill to produce it. As a result, the only vehicles in the world that were using it for the next five years were upscale French luxury cars and the Model T. It has been suggested that the very reason that so many Model T Fords have survived over the years, was due to his use of vanadium steel.

Ford touted his use of vanadium steel in this advertising copy....

“The Model T Truck is built entirely of the best materials obtainable. No car at $5,000 has higher grade, for none better can be bought. Heat treated Ford Vanadium steel throughout; in axles, shafts, springs, gears...in fact a vanadium steel car ...is one evidence of superiority”

“Nobody disputes that Vanadium steel is the finest automobile steel obtainable...We defy any man to break a Ford Vanadium steel shaft or spring or axle with any less than 50% more rigid would be required to put any other steel in the junk pile..........”

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