TRUCKING'S PIONEER - THE WINGFOOT EXPRESS STORY

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Led by Packards and Macks, seven Wingfoot Express trucks were making routine runs from Akron to Boston by the end of 1917.

One April morning in 1917, a group of Goodyear workers gathered in the chilly dawn at the company garage in Akron, Ohio. Before them stood an ungainly new truck, motor ticking quietly.

The truck was a five-ton Packard, but the 10-foot-high, specially built body had been designed by Goodyear.

The plan was to establish the first interstate trucking route by making regular nonstop runs from the Akron tire factory to the company's tire fabric mill in Connecticut and return, a distance of 740 miles.

Across the width of the truck, behind the driver's seat, was an enclosed sleeping compartment. Using a two-man crew, they would alternate driving chores while one rested in what was to become the first sleeper cab in the trucking industry.

Behind the novel traveling bunk, the cargo bed was loaded with a dozen spare tires, a compressor to inflate them, 500 feet of manila line, shovels and a heavy block and tackle.

Handshakes done, two men stepped from the crowd and climbed into the enclosed cab. Drivers Harry Apple and Harry Smeltzer waved to their co-workers and started their trip into transportation history - an interstate truck run that pioneered long-haul trucking in the United States. What was most novel about Goodyear's truck, named the Wingfoot Express, was the big pneumatic tires it rolled on. Hard, solid rubber tires were standard equipment for short hauls in those days.

But this trip was not to be a routine five- to 10-mile errand. Accompanied by a tire engineer, movie man and a publicist in two support autos, this truck was to attempt a 1,540-mile round trip, an unheard of feat in 1917.

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