Shipbucket

Here’s a bit of trucking history for you all. Some is new, and some is old … and some is a blend of both due to ingenuity, desperation and the realities of a small-town general freight operation in Southern Manitoba.
While some of these drawings will center on elements relating to smaller operations, there will as well be other examples up to and including large modern fleet types. I hope you find it interesting.

Fruehauf Cattle liner semi-trailers

Here are three examples of proto-typical straight floor cattle trailers built by Fruehauf in the 70's and 80's. This particular model was a reasonably common sight across the Canadian prairie provinces in that period, with some examples still floating about today. Heights and lengths would vary, with lengths up to 50' not being uncommon. heights varied from 11'6" O/A to the full 13'6" legal height. While some were single deck configurations, many would be set up with removable decking for livestock such as hogs or sheep.

In the examples here, the first one is 48' in length while the remaining pair are 50' long. The top pair have side vent covers to allow for both temperature control and re-configuring the trailers for dry freight operations.

The tractors shown attached to them are in order a 1967 IHC 4000, a 1984 Ford LT 9000 , and a 1976 Freightliner. There will be more on the trucks themselves at a later time.

Very nice work I love North American semi-trailer tractors.

Double trailer combinations had become an accepted format on major routes across North America by the mid-60's.

As weights and overall dimensions for trucks began to increase in the 1960's, many smaller regional carriers would look for ways to utilize their older equipment in a viable manner.

With many of these carriers having numbers of trailers ranging from 22 to 28 feet that were at that point not able to take full advantage of the newer allowable limits in their original guise, many would experiment with re-configuring these older trailers for dual trailer combinations.

These modifications would include the installation of a pintle hook for connecting the converter which would then be coupled to the rear trailer, as well as the appropriate electrical and pressurized air connections for the second trailer's lights and brakes.

At the same time as the modifications were done for the coupling arrangements, in many cases an effort was made to upgrade the lead trailers as well.

In this example the lead trailer is a 1941 28' Dominion stake and rack trailer. Along with the necessary additions to convert it for pulling a second trailer, it was as well reconfigured from its original round front steel bulk design to a squared off format, along with several other linear improvements.

Realy nicy work looking forward to see more of them

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Best Regards,
Aart.

Projects:

The Kingdom of Rochfort in FD

Great job!

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Great work!