Page 75 - Newcom

BOOK REVIEW
Singing wheels
August Fruehauf and the history of the Fruehauf Trailer Company
TRUCK NEWS
April 2016
75
BIy Harry Rudolfs
n her book, Singing Wheels, Ruth Ann Fruehauf credits her grand- father August Fruehauf, a Detroit blacksmith and carriage maker,
with the invention of the modern truck trailer. The story goes back over 100 years to 1914, when a Detroit lumber baron and regular customer asked Au- gust to convert a horse-drawn trailer into a conveyance that would haul a boat to his vacation home pulled by a Model T roadster.
Ruth finds it fitting that Detroit, the centre of the automotive universe, would also be the birthplace of the “semi-trailer,” what’s considered a “tractor-trailer” in Canadian parlance – we rarely use the term “semi.”
Apparently the nomenclature goes back to August Fruehauf’s day. He called a trailer with wheels at one end, a “semi-trailer.”
Australians also like to use “semi” to denote a single tractor coupled to a trailer, whereas the Brits call them “ar- ticulated lorries” or “artics.”
Via e-mail, Ruth asserts that the term “semi” is important to the genesis of the invention.
“The other trailers, by and large, were four-wheeled trailers, not two-
wheeled trailers. It is a big distinction. In 1919 at an early industry convention of trailer manufacturers, the Fruehauf representative was mocked and made the laughing stock. The next year Frue- hauf’s sales peaked at just over a mil- lion dollars. They had the last laugh.”
However, Alexander Winton, an ear- ly auto and truck manufacturer from Cleveland, Ohio, should be acknowl- edged as an early pioneer of the truck trailer idea.
In 1898 he was trying to figure out a way to deliver autos to customers, and developed a float-type trailer that had wheels on one end and an elevat- ed platform that latched to the top of the tractor’s mid-frame engine. The configuration could haul one car and it somewhat resembles the removable goose-neck configuration used today by heavy equipment haulers.
Another trailer manufacturer, “Util- ity created a similar design around 1915-16 but don’t claim the invention of the semi-trailer,” according to Ruth Fruehauf. So it seems the prize must go to August, the son of German immi- grants to Detroit, who laid the founda- tion for a great manufacturing empire from humble beginnings in the family shop on Gratiot Ave.
Singing Wheels documents the rise
August Freuhauf is credited with inventing the semi-trailer in a new book, written by his granddaughter Ruth Ann Fruehauf (pictured below).
and fall of the family-owned corpora- tion, which at one time the author calls “the General Motors of truck trailers.” With more than 1,000 patents the com- pany’s innovations extended to devel- opment of hydraulic liftgates, reefers, flatbeds, and aluminum and steel- bodied trailers.
Fruehauf ceased to be family- owned and controlled with the deaths of August’s sons (the last one, Roy, died in 1965), and Ruth suggests sibling ri- valry, in part, contributed to the com- pany’s eventual unraveling. Trailers are still being made in other countries under the Fruehauf name but it ceases to exist in North America. The compa- ny filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and the corporation was bought and absorbed by Wabash, which showed no interest- ed in keeping the brand going.
Singing Wheels is an attractive book that should be the part of any truck enthusiast’s collection. Half the vol- ume is a record of photos and ads from various eras. These offer a fascinating
glimpse into high-society Detroit dur- ing its automotive heyday.
Ruth Fruehauf wrote Singing Wheels to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her grandfather’s invention. But she also thinks it’s important to draw les- sons from history.
“Some techniques and devices can inform modern day technology...It is remarkable that so many years later, so many people still are using the trail- ers and still rave about the quality of manufacturing and workmanship,” she said.
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