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Are Labatt’s Streamlined Semis the Coolest Trucks Ever?
These days in our hypercapitalist world, when people hear the term “streamlined,” the unfortunate association tends to be one of profits, of paring down some aspect of a business or process in order to synergize efficiencies for the shareholders. Bletch.
In the car world, which is a better world, an ideal world, the term means something altogether better, sexier, slipperier.
The streamline moderne movement of the art deco period took hold in the early 1930s, and the smooth, elegant architecture and industrial design that emerged still captivates our imaginations and influence our collective aesthetic. We love a teardrop.
French coachbuilders were masters of the movement as applied to the automobile, with cars like the Talbot-Lago T150, Delage D8 120, Delahaye Type 135, and Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic all designed to cheat the wind. Mercedes-Benz and Tatra had their own entries, as did Pierce-Arrow, Cadillac, Chrysler, and more here in America.
But if there was any one man who mainstreamed streamlining in this country, it was the Russian-born Ukrainian aristocrat Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky. An industrial designer with a knack for creating attractive products people wanted to touch, hold, and use, his work influenced everything from fountain pens and watches to kitchen appliances to cars and trucks. He was in the fortunate position to wield some of that influence in the pages of Esquire, for which he served as a longtime technical editor beginning with the magazine’s first issue in October 1933.
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On the automotive front, he designed the Cord Hayes Coupe, otherwise known as the L-29, which debuted in 1929 and won the 1930 Grand Prix design award at the Monaco Concours d’Elegance (the first such award for an American car and one of five in a row won by the Count at the prestigious show). He designed the all-new “Speedstream” line for Nash for 1934. In between he styled one-off coachbuilt bodies for the likes of Bentley, Minerva, Rolls-Royce, Packard, Cadillac, Mercedes, Fiat, and Voisin.
One could argue, however, that de Sakhnoffsky’s most influential designs took place during his 1930s partnership with the White Motor Company of Cleveland, Ohio. It was there that he styled not only the sightseeing Model 706 buses that would shuttle millions of visitors around America’s national parks for decades, but also the greatest delivery and promotional vehicle ever devised: Labatt’s Beer trucks.
The Labatt Brewing Company of London, Ontario, employed its first delivery truck in 1913, a Ford Model T it used in conjunction with its fleet of keg-hauling horse-drawn wagons. Though prohibition in the province began in 1916, it didn’t stop Labatt from making full-strength beer for U.S. export, along with “temperance beer” of 2 percent ABV for sale throughout Ontario. To keep up with the demand, several more Fords joined the fleet, and by the early 1920s, trucks and vans had completely replaced traditional horsepower, and the stables had been converted to a garage. In the mid-1920s, according to former mechanic Arthur Robinson, Labatt sold off about 18 of its 1-ton Fords, which simply weren’t up to the task. By the end of the decade, the fleet was made up of roughly 10 REO Model Fs, a White, an International, and a trio of chain-driven Ruggles, among others.
Prohibition in Ontario ended in 1927, but a ban on liquor advertising that lasted into the 1950s meant brewers like Labatt had to get creative with their branding and messaging. For company owner John Labatt, an attractive rolling billboard seemed just the thing.
In 1935, Labatt contacted White’s London (Ontario) office with the idea, which threw it to the design department in Cleveland. De Sakhnoffsky devised four different designs for the semitrucks, to be constructed in succession over the next decade. The first design, completed in 1936, to be unveiled at that year’s Canadian National Exhibition, featured a standard White single-axle tractor and a 20-foot single-axle, drop-frame Fruehauf trailer with a tapering roof. Toronto’s Smith Bros. Body Works constructed the sleek aluminum skin over a hardwood framework, reportedly working solely from de Sakhnoffsky’s sketches rather than detailed blueprints. The coachbuilder also added running boards and rear wheel spats to the cab to complete the look. Bright red paintwork with gold leaf lettering, applied in the workshop of Labatt’s Brewing Company, capped it off. Four of the first-series trucks were built.
The next series debuted in 1937, with a new streamlined White tractor also mated to a Fruehauf trailer. Smith Bros. built 12 of them, and in addition to their beer-delivering duties, some of the trucks made the rounds that year at expos in Canada and the U.S., including Cleveland’s Great Lakes Exposition, where several of de Sakhnoffsky’s White designs starred. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, the streamlined truck won a design award. According to a history of de Sakhnoffsky on Coachbuilt.com, the trucks could carry 8.5 tons of beer and cruise at 50 mph.
Rarest of de Sakhnoffsky’s designs for Labatt are the third series, with just two built before World War II put an end to production. They differed not just in their styling but in their liveries; each was painted the standard red with gold trim and lettering but also included a deep blue hue.
Following the war, production resumed, and in 1947 the 10 trucks of the fourth series were built. These are largely considered to be the most iconic of the run, with radical teardrop White WA122 cabs looking like something out of Dr. Seuss’ Whoville, with a broad flat front, big, rounded windows, and a curved roof that tapers quickly back to the fifth-wheel decking and nearly fully enclosed drive wheels. The forward-tilt cabovers were powered by a 386-cid inline-six making 135 horsepower, with five forward gears.
Beyond their looks, technical innovations included an anti-jackknife device, the first trucks so equipped on Canadian roads. Fruehauf again provided the trailers, now 28.5 feet long, and even lower to match the lines of the cab, and the custom coachwork for all was again handed over to Smith Bros. The tractors and trailers of the fourth series could only be paired with each other—you couldn’t haul a fourth-series trailer with some other tractor, for instance—such were the ergonomics and tolerances of the design.
Not only were Labatt’s trucks exceptional, its drivers were, too. The company ran a Highway Courtesy Program, and all drivers were required to stop and offer assistance to any stranded motorists they encountered. The program, like the trucks themselves, created great buzz for the beermaker.
Labatt’s made good use of its innovative trucks until 1955, when it sold the streamliners, which were by then a completely outdated and inefficient means of cargo transport. The brewery began advertising by more traditional means and updated its fleet. Most of the trucks disappeared into obscurity, but the company does own one of the trucks from the fourth series, thanks to brothers Joe and Bob Scott.
In the mid-1970s, Joe Scott, the recently retired president of London’s White Truck Limited, along with brother Bob, a longtime Labatt employee, began searching for a fourth series truck to restore. The pair had already located and restored Labatt’s first 1919 keg truck, a White designed to carry 96 kegs, but their dream was a streamliner.
The Scotts tracked down a viable trailer then being used as a construction-site office, and they were able to re-create the cab from a pair of standard White WA122 tractors they’d uncovered. They scoured North America for parts but also fabricated many, as well as many of the tools used to construct the trucks originally. The restoration took more than four years, but the result, unveiled in 1983, was a rolling museum in red and gold. Labatt still displays it on occasion.
To commemorate these unforgettable staples of Ontario roads, as part of a run of stamps featuring 25 historic vehicles essential to Canadian transport history, in 1996 the Canada Post Corporation issued a 90-cent stamp featuring the 1947 Labatt’s Beer streamliner. Affixed to letters addressed to all corners of the globe, Alexis de Sakhnoffsky’s revolutionary trucks finally made deliveries outside of Canada.
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Is the 1947 version that was restored still around?
It is! Labatt’s owns it and stores it at its Hometown Brewery in London, Ontario.
One of those would make a hell of a cool RV conversion
The simple answer is: Yes
The streamline era was truly remarkable. Trucks, cars, significantly, passenger trains and locomotives, steamships, refrigerators, furniture…if you could build it, it was streamlined. Radios in particular look awesome. From a time when design mattered as much as function. I wish I had been around to see it.