While electric cars gain traction in the market, there is great interest in deploying entire fleets of electric trucks and replacing their diesel-guzzling counterparts. Tesla, Volvo, Volkswagen, Nikola Motor Company, and Daimler are among the names competing in this space, but they are not the first to tread this ground. The electric truck concept is more than a century old, and excellent proof of this is the C-T Model A 10, built in 1912 to distribute coal, paper, and newspapers.
The Electric Truck Race Then and Now
The Tesla Semi was officially announced in 2016, and although there is still a year to see it in action, the specialized press cannot stop talking about that truck. At the same time, Tesla must face fierce competition in the form of vehicles like the Nikola One (with a hybrid design based on hydrogen fuel cells), and the electric version of the Volvo FE, initially intended for European streets. Pollution, noise, and maintenance costs are the three main reasons to adopt an electric truck, as long as the distances to cover are not too great (for example, the Tesla Semi is capped at 805 kilometers). In other words, electric trucks need well-defined roles, and that takes us more than a hundred years into the past, when they first began transporting cargo. One of the pioneers was the C-T Model A 10.
The Curtis Fleet and Its Workhorse
The Commercial Truck Company, operating in Philadelphia, built the C-T Model A 10 in 1912, and two of them recently appeared for sale. Both trucks were part of the fleet of Curtis Publishing Company, a publisher that produced magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Jack & Jill. The total fleet amounted to 22 trucks, all tasked with moving coal, rolls of paper, and magazines between the train station, the printing press, the post office, and other distribution points. Technical specifications indicate that the C-T Model A 10 had a maximum capacity of 5 tons, but Curtis pushed its trucks with trips of 9 or 10 tons per trip, and shifts of 48 hours rotating drivers. Loading and unloading such a quantity of material could take hours, and they used that time to restore battery autonomy, while the driver simply climbed onto another waiting truck and returned.
Technical Details and Legacy
The C-T Model A 10 used between 42 and 45 batteries to produce 10 volts and 382 amps. Each wheel was equipped with a General Electric 36-A-102 motor of 16 horsepower, but there was nothing resembling a gearbox. The driver could only turn, go forward, or reverse, and reverse was frequently used to compensate for the mechanical brakes. The top speed of the C-T Model A 10 was just under 20 kilometers per hour, but it dropped to 9 kilometers when loaded. Curtis's trucks worked for fifty years until their retirement in 1962, and it is estimated that only 15 remain worldwide.
