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Trucks on Display

 

Below is a sampling of the many trucks on display in our Trucking Hall of Fame® Exhibit Hall. Check out our app for more information, photos, and an audio recording for each truck.  Click here to download.

1890 Triple Wagon


Truck Information:
This wagon was built right around the beginning of the 20th century. The metal tank is likely a Butler tank with three compartments which would have been filled with kerosene, gasoline, and heating oil. The three tanks held around 300 gallons of liquid each making a total of 900 gallons that could be transported on each trip. This was the biggest fuel wagon available during this time period. Due to its size, four draft horses- weighing close to 1,400 pounds each- were used to pull this wagon. It only would have been able to go about three miles per hour. The driver would take the wagon from a fuel fill-up station at the town's trainyard to the various farmers outside of the town's limits. This was very similar to how milk used to be delivered to individual houses. Fuel would have been dispensed via three different nozzles at the rear of the tanker. The driver would bring 5-gallon cans to dispense the fuel to the farmer's tank. The farmers would use the fuel in a variety of ways including running vehicles, tractors, and power plants as well as to meet lighting and heating demands. This wagon would have been heavily used until around the 1930s when fuel tanker trucks almost totally replaced the horse-drawn fuel tankers.



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