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In the early 1900s, John and Horace Dodge formed the Dodge Brothers Co. John’s skills were sales and management, while Horace was an accomplished mechanic. They started their company by making parts for various automotive companies, including Oldsmobile and Ford. There was some disagreement with Ford, so the Dodge Brothers decided to make their own car in 1914.
They had earned an excellent reputation for quality and as a result enjoyed good sales. But they didn’t build a truck until World War, I and that was a panel truck, not a pickup, with a half-ton capacity using a four-cylinder, 35-horsepower engine. It is believed these early trucks used the Dodge car chassis. In 1921, the Graham Brothers started selling their trucks through the Dodge Brothers dealers. These were bigger, 1.5-ton trucks but built on a Dodge chassis using the same four-cylinder Dodge engine. By 1926, the Dodge Brothers had bought out the Graham Brothers.
Unfortunately, both Dodge brothers died in 1920. The widows appointed a long-time employee, Fredrick Haynes, to run the company and the second largest automotive manufacturer slid to fifth place. In 1925 the families sold the company to Dillion, Reed & Co., an investment company, which sold it to Chrysler in 1928. At the time, Dodge was a bigger company than Chrysler, a relatively new company formed in 1924 by acquiring the assets of Maxwell Motors. Panel trucks, although the first type of truck produced by Dodge, were a pretty minor part of their business and pretty basic vehicles.
Larry Blodgett’s grandfather started the Blodgett Floor Covering Co. in 1946, but it was originally called Blodgett Linoleum Co. Blodgett, as a kid, remembers his grandfather’s work truck, a red 1952 Dodge Panel truck. Now the third-generation owner and manager of the Lafayette company, Blodgett wanted to get a truck just like the one his grandfather had and used — not an easy sell to his wife. This issue’s truck was built at the Chrysler plant in San Leandro in March of 1952. Blodgett thinks he is probably the seventh or eighth owner.
“I had kind of toyed with the idea of ‘Wouldn’t it be neat to have an old truck?’ One day I was going through a box of 8-millimeter movies. One of these reels had pictures of my grandfather and his installers back in the 1950s with their trucks. I thought it would be cool to have one of those. So, I bought this truck from a contractor in 2005, and the restoration was completed in 2007.
“It was mechanically operational when I bought it. In 2005, I hadn’t driven a stick in a long time, and I had never driven a car with ‘three on a tree.’ I trusted it had a third gear, as I don’t think I ever got it into third gear. So I bought it and had it towed from Sacramento to have it safety-checked. I really didn’t have to do too much to it mechanically, but the body was in rough shape.”
Blodgett said the truck had been painted poorly numerous times.
“When new, the truck was available in six colors, and I think it had been painted at least four of the six. At first the body shop I took it to didn’t want to work on the truck. ‘That’s a lot of sheet metal to keep straight,’ the owner said. But he finally agreed to take it on.”
The price paid for the truck was $7,500, but that was only the beginning.
“The paint and body were probably about $14,000 to $15,000. The signing was about $1,200; for the engine work, wiring, radiator I probably have $7,000 to $8,000 in it. There are bits and pieces like upgrading the handles and hardware by going on EBay and buying stuff.”
He estimates his total investment at about $60,000 and worth probably less than half that amount. This rolling billboard is about 16 feet long and 6.75 feet tall. It is powered by a stock, flat-head, 218-cubic-inch, six-cylinder engine rated at 97 horsepower. It doesn’t have much in terms of creature comforts, and Blodgett says it get about 9 MPG.
It has a bench seat with three seat belts. Blodgett believes only a driver’s seat was standard and a second single seat was an option. The bench seat was probably installed by a previous owner. It’s not surprising that the floor, door panels and headliner are beautifully carpeted in this floor covering van.
“If I don’t have a lot of appointments,” Blodgett said, “I’ll bring it to the office. Sometimes I’ll drive it to make sales calls if they’re local. There’s no power steering, brakes or air conditioning. I put over 1,000 miles a year on it, and I would like to say it’s fun to drive, but it’s actually a lot of work to drive.”
Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To view more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles or to read more of Dave’s columns, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.
