The mountain ranges of the American West – and likewise the Swiss Alps and the hills of Cornwall – each produced their own distinctive breeds of truck.
In Switzerland, to cope with alpine conditions, in 1904, Saurer set the pattern with an almost unimaginably inventive vehicle braking mechanism. The flick of a lever switched the engine to two-stroke air-compressor mode, inverting the action of the exhaust valves. Supplementing the wheel brakes, it could operate continuously without wear and tear on long mountain descents.
In England, between 1954 and1962, Rowe Hillmaster, Liskeard, built trucks designed to suit the narrow winding lanes criss-crossing its native Cornish landscape. In a variety of wheelbases, typically with Meadows diesels installed under the chassis, payloads ranged from six-tons to 15-tons in artic spec.
Orders of magnitude greater than the hills of the West Country are the Rockies, the Pacific Coast range and the Cascades – collectively the North American Cordillera. For early motor trucks they were an impassible barrier.
Short of driving Western US mountain passes yourself, the conditions are conveyed perfectly in Duel, Stephen Spielberg’s debut movie. Ignore the wimp in the repmobile. The star is a menacing, dirt-streaked hell-on-wheels Peterbilt 281 ‘eighteen-wheeler’.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, in scores of towns and cities from Illinois in the Midwest and eastwards, blacksmiths, agricultural and other machinery manufacturers, cartwrights and chancers were trying their hand at producing automobiles, vans and motor trucks. On the Pacific side by contrast, manufacturing industry of any
