Moving Words – Semi-Truck
Timothy Brady
“In consequence of inventing machines, men will be devoured by them.” – Jules Verne
Our van operators drive semi-truck moving vans each and every day servicing our moving customers. Have you ever wondered who’s credited with inventing the first semi-truck?
Alexander Winton emigrated from Scotland to New York City in 1878, where the 19-year-old worked as a steamship engineer. After that, he moved to Cleveland just as the bicycle craze was sweeping the country.
Businessmen were giving up horse-drawn carriages for bicycles, which didn’t have to be fed, watered, or stabled, and Winton and his brother-in-law opened The Winton Bicycle Company in 1891. Meantime, he began designing engines for the new-on-the-scene motor carriages.
In 1896 Winton began building cars, turning out a total of 22 that year at the Winton Motor Carriage Company of Cleveland. However, he ran into a problem: those motor carriages were sold to people living all across the country, and there was no delivery system for them, other than driving each vehicle to its new owner. This put a huge amount of wear and tear on the cars even before the owner could get behind the wheel.
So in 1898, Winton invented the semi-truck to deliver his motor carriages, calling the new invention an “automobile hauler.” He placed each brand-new Winton on a two-wheeled cart pulled by a specially modified automobile, with its engine in the rear. The cart held one Winton motor carriage, pushed onto the cart and secured to the platform. The loaded cart was then attached to the trunk of the pulling car, a primitive RGN. A year later, Winton was not only making ‘semi-trucks’ to haul his own autos, he was selling them to other manufacturers in the Cleveland area.
He was surprised when his grand entrance via motor carriage into New York City was completely ignored, and Winton and his car took the train back to Cleveland. The next year, 1899, he drove the route again and brought along a reporter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Along the way, reporter Charles Shanks filed his stories for the newspaper (which was sponsoring the trip), showing “the feasibility of this mode of locomotion” and popularizing the term “automobile.” People all across the country followed the “road trip,” and about a million people greeted Winton and Shanks when they finally got to New York.
The age of the automobile and the truck had officially begun, as Winton’s next invention that same year was the first mail truck in the United States. He would eventually hold more than a hundred patents, and he shared his plans for a steering wheel with Henry Ford in 1901. By 1908, Cleveland was the center of automobile manufacturing for the United States, and Winton kept inventing. He realized autos could be made to a pattern rather than individually hand-built, and he also invented the nation’s first diesel engine for marine and stationary use.
Winton died in Cleveland on June 21, 1932, the day after his 72nd birthday.
Something to think about while we movers navigate the summer road construction or the winter weather.
“Man keeps inventing things all the time.” – Mikhail Kalashnikov
