OAK - LINED AND BOLTED
Its trucks featured all-bolted, steel channel section chassis with seasoned oak inlays. It stuck with the traction advantages chain-drive – and was the first to exceed 500-bhp. The make was Sterling. Unsurprisingly, in its peak decades, it enjoyed a reputation as the ultimate go-to US-make for engineering integrity and rugged quality. Although takeover in the early 1950s resulted in it being retired to the Old Timers’ Hall of Fame, the make carried sufficient weight for a short-lived revival starting during the second half of the 1990s.
In the beginning, the trucks were badged Sternberg. Founded in 1907 by William Sternberg in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1915 the name was changed in deference to growing anti-German sentiment in America even before US armed forces joined the fight in The First World War. In 1918, it became one of 15 manufacturers to build Gramm-Bernstein designed ‘Liberty’ trucks for the US Army. By the war’s end in November of the same year, it had delivered a total of 479 ‘Liberty’ model Bs.
The early trucks were forward control, with capacity ratings between one and five tons. (Tons here are 2,000-lb US short tons, as distinct from the 2,240-lb of British ‘imperial’ tons).
Top of the range models had chain-drive. Specifications lower down the weight scale had worm drive. A total switch from forward-to normal-control was made in 1915, and the weight
