Horse-Drawn Commercial Vehicles

by Don H. Berkebile (Editor)

Journey back to a bygone era when city streets and country roads were thronged with a rich assortment of horse-powered ice wagons, drays, lunch wagons, delivery trucks, fire engines, buggies, carts, log wagons, stage coaches, hearses, and many other such conveyances.
You'll find them all in this treasury of over 250 authentic illustrations — many unavailable elsewhere — depicting a wide variety of commercial vehicles of long ago. The author, a former member of the curatorial staff of the Smithsonian Institution’s Division of Transportation, has carefully selected detailed engravings of the period, many from rare trade periodicals in the collection of the Smithsonian, as well as photographs. Well-researched captions accompany the illustrations, focusing on how the design of each vehicle served its specific purposes and needs, and supplying various dimensions, coloring, and other details. The author has also written an engrossing historical introduction that sharply defines the development of commercial vehicles in an age of headlong expansion and industrial advancement.
Invaluable for anyone interested in antique transportation, this volume is also an ideal source of royalty-free illustrations for use in ads, catalogs, book and magazine illustrations, and elsewhere.

Genres: Nonfiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1989

Reviews

[Jim]

Useful for some light research I was doing on types of wagons.

[Steve]

Results: 3' x 8'... with 5 kids, very very tight.... seemed impossible!!!! i'm trying to get the dimensions of the horse drawn wagon used in "The Night Journey" to have my students get a somewhat kinesthetic feel for Jewish in Russia escaping the cossacks and the good ole tzar around 1880's. So far, the book is not giving the dimesnions i need. the classification is "farm wagon". 4 wheels. I'm guessing 30" wide and about 6-9' long for 5 adults, 2 babies, luggage (of sorts) some food, some bed covers as padding.