Seven Decades Ago, This Tiny Weird Delivery Truck Carried More Cargo Than Any Heavy Duty Pickup Truck Built Today

The delivery truck is an unsung hero of modern society. Life just wouldn’t be the same without being able to have goods delivered to the home or the jobsite. One kind of truck most people likely don’t think much about is the lumber truck. When you order lumber, a large flatbed truck rolls to your jobsite and delivers the goods. These trucks tend to be huge, but it wasn’t always this way. Several decades ago, one Illinois company tried to reinvent the way lumber is delivered by making trucks that were nothing but flat decks. This is the DeKalb Lumberjack, and it’s a truck shorter than a modern minivan, yet it carries larger loads than any pickup truck on the road today.

The DeKalb Lumberjack and its derivatives are types of trucks that are known as vocational trucks. In short, a vocational truck is one designed to be really good at a specific job. Fire engines, dump trucks, bucket trucks, garbage trucks, tow trucks, crane trucks, food trucks, and concrete trucks are all great examples of vocational rigs. Sure, these trucks could be used in other roles. You can park a car in a dump truck. However, these trucks are really meant to be really good at a specific job.

The DeKalb Commercial Body Company of DeKalb, Illinois, specialized in vocational truck bodies. The company used to take commercial chassis and build special bodies for deliveries of milk, bread, refrigerated goods, furniture, and more. In 1955, the company launched a new product aimed at the lumberman. The DeKalb Lumberjack sought to make lumber deliveries faster and more economically by making a truck that was all about lumber. The Lumberjack was little more than a giant bed for lumber with an engine and four wheels, plus a tiny place for a driver to operate the thing. In creating the Lumberjack, DeKalb created one of the weirdest work trucks.

Born In The Midwest

According to the business history site Coachbuilt.com, the DeKalb Commercial Body Company opened for business in 1904 as the Sycamore Wagon Works of Sycamore, Illinois. This is backed up by a report written in 1904 by the True Republican newspaper of Sycamore. That report details how Charles E. Bradt, Samuel E. Bradt, and Madison D. Shipman joined forces to build their own patented delivery wagons. The men raised $5,000 to secure a facility in Sycamore, Illinois, and the report said that Sycamore Wagon planned to build wagons for milk and piano delivery.

According to Coachbuilt, the Bradts had experience in manufacturing and selling gloves. Meanwhile, Shipman was a physician. Their Sycamore Wagon Works first specialized in lightweight, highly maneuverable horse-drawn wagons. Sycamore Wagon also advertised its Sycamore One-Step Wagon, a design for a low-floor wagon for easy ingress and egress.

As time progressed, Sycamore Wagon’s business evolved from delivery wagons to early vocational trucks, and with it, the company’s name changed with the times, too. In 1912, the company changed its name to the DeKalb Wagon Company and further expanded its work truck business with the purchase of the assets of the defunct Randolph Motor Truck Co. of Flint, Michigan.

In 1940, the DeKalb Centennial Committee writes, the company changed its name one more time to the DeKalb Commercial Body Company, reflecting DeKalb’s commitment to building work trucks. By this time, DeKalb had built a wide variety of trucks from fire trucks to refrigerator trucks, alongside low-floor delivery vans.

It was also around this time that DeKalb launched a research department. Members of this department would visit tradesmen in the field and learn about what they loved and hated about their trucks.

The Lumberjack

In 1955, DeKalb began advertising a new kind of truck. According to advertisements, DeKalb engineers met with members of the lumber delivery industry to find out what they wanted in a truck. DeKalb found out that lumbermen wanted a truck that made it easy and economical to deliver a “jag” (load) of lumber. Existing trucks were large, not particularly maneuverable, and were expensive to operate.

DeKalb’s solution was to develop a truck that could carry a full load of lumber that would normally require a large truck, but in a compact footprint. This truck was called the DeKalb Lumberjack, and the DeKalb’s custom body was bolted to existing Dodge, Ford, and International Harvester commercial chassis.

How this worked was pretty clever. Normally, the front end of a truck featured the engine and the cab. Behind that sat the cargo area. More compact trucks were built as cab-over-engine designs, where the cab was piled on top of the engine and front axle. Both of these designs have a limitation where the carried cargo cannot take up the full length of the vehicle since the engine and cab are in the way.

The DeKalb Lumberjack features a body that’s primarily just a flatbed surface. This flatbed sits at just a touch above engine level, allowing for a perfectly flat load floor. As photos show, this surface ran the entire length of the truck and featured open ends, allowing for the transportation of lumber that was longer than the vehicle itself.

A critical element of the Lumberjack was what DeKalb called the “half-cab,” a little pod that’s just barely large enough for the truck’s sole occupant, its driver. This is a concept that has been used many times throughout history in large commercial trucks, including mobile cranes, dump trucks, mixer trucks, and more. Automotive visionary Preston Tucker had also sketched out something similar to the design of the Lumberjack back in the 1940s.

The original Lumberjack had some dead space under the load floor, and DeKalb offered an option to install cabinets in the lower portion of the body to haul tools, paint, nails, or other work equipment. In addition, there was another load space directly under the main floor for the loading of other building materials like plywood, insulation board, and other materials that weren’t very long.

An early Lumberjack measured about 16 feet long. That’s a foot and a half shorter than a new Ford Ranger. It’s still shorter than a Honda Odyssey. Of course, it’s also smaller than a modern full-size pickup and practically minuscule compared to a new heavy-duty pickup truck. Yet, because of its unique design, it was capable of carrying 18-foot-long lumber in addition to plywood, drywall, and other building materials.

According to DeKalb’s The Daily Chronicle, local lumber yards were in love. The newspaper said that local yards usually had to operate trucks with 160-inch wheelbases to haul what the DeKalb Lumberjack could carry with only 125 inches of wheelbase. DeKalb’s truck promised easier and faster loading on top of cheaper operating costs, thanks to the truck just being smaller and lighter. Lumberjack trucks also rode on common platforms, so repairing them wasn’t any different than usual.

In 1956, the California Lumber Merchant writes, DeKalb announced an evolution of the Lumberjack with the Lumberjack Sr. This truck had the same 16-foot length and 122-inch to 126-inch wheelbase, but dual rear wheels and an upgraded carrying capacity. DeKalb marketed its truck as being 9 feet shorter than a typical lumber delivery truck.

Apparently, lumber yards around Illinois and Wisconsin loved these trucks and demanded even more from DeKalb. The company responded in 1958 with the DeKalb Lumber King. This truck was similar to the Lumberjack, but stretched to 21 feet long on a 149-inch to 157-inch wheelbase. The Lumber King also featured a stake bed and rollers, which allowed for cargo to roll on and off the truck. An alternative version of this truck, the Steel King, was targeted at the steel industry.

You might be wondering why DeKalb quotes such huge ranges for wheelbase lengths, and this was because DeKalb was a body constructor. You provided the truck. DeKalb wanted to sell these to basically any business that wanted one, so that meant offering these bodies for basically any domestic brand of forward control truck.

DeKalb would also expand outside of delivery trades. There was also the DeKalb Contractor, a Lumberjack with bed rails and additional tool space. Then there was the DeKalb Journeyman, and it was designed for plumbing, HVAC, and similar trades. This one also had bed rails and several toolboxes. DeKalb did note that it was not the only company with this weird flatbed pickup truck concept, but claimed that such an idea was still rare in America.

In case you’re curious, these trucks were ridiculously basic inside. Forget about niceties like a radio or an air-conditioner. These things didn’t even have headliners! But hey, these trucks didn’t really need to be pretty, they just needed to get work done.

I do not have any production data on hand, but these trucks are considered to be very rare. An Internet search for these trucks yields only two in the modern day. One of them sold on Bring a Trailer for $19,500 in 2022. That truck was a DeKalb Lumber King and was based on a Chevrolet P35 chassis.

I’ll give you an idea of the hauling power here. The P35 was often used as a step-van chassis and featured a 10,000-pound GVWR. The truck from the Bring a Trailer auction featured a 292 cubic inch straight-six. That engine would have made 153 HP net and 255 lb-ft of torque net when new. So, this isn’t a fast truck, but good enough to put some work in.

A Dead End?

Unfortunately, it’s not known how well these trucks sold. DeKalb also never mentioned prices. Coachbuilt notes that the DeKalb Commercial Body Company didn’t seem to survive the 1970s. The company was listed in the DeKalb City Directory until 1969. By 1971, DeKalb’s facility was vacant. It’s not known why DeKalb failed or exactly when, but the trail does go cold after 1969.

Of course, this truck is also sort of a dead end. Vans are superior platforms for plumbers, contractors, and HVAC technicians, and straight trucks are perfectly capable of hauling lumber.

I’d love to drive one of these trucks today. I imagine myself parking a slew of motorcycles on one. Or heck, I’d have fun just scooting around in one as a classic car. It’s like a miniature aircraft carrier on wheels. I can see why these trucks didn’t work in the long run, but it’s so cool that they existed when they did.