Portable Microreactor

Kaleidos transportable nuclear reactor delivery. Radiant Nuclear

Each unit can operate for up to five years before refueling. The reactor has a planned operating life of 20 years. ZeroHedge has the story.

1930 FORD MODEL AA EXPRESS TRUCK

1930 FORD MODEL AA EXPRESS TRUCK

The engine and transmission were the same as the one in the Model A car except the transmission had a creeper gear that made it a four speed and the radiator was bigger. From Wikipedia we have this:

The AA usually received plainer interiors than their car counterparts.

Which make sense. Trucks are tools, tools used for some kind of work, and creature comforts weren't that important for the people who were paying for the trucks.

The Midwest is Booming?

Americans Are About to Get a Lot Richer
Maxinomics

I live on the left coast so I don't really have a feel for what's going on in the Midwest, but the story Phil tells in this video is encouraging. Could it be that Trump's policies are actually having a beneficial effect? Huh, who'd a thunk it?

Unless all this productivity is being is being accomplished with robots, and there aren't any more people going to work.

The Eisenhauer Twin Engine Truck

Eisenhauer Twin Engine Truck

Mac's Motor City Garage has the story:

In the pleasant little town of Van Wert, Ohio near the Ohio-Indiana border, there’s an enterprise called the Eisenhauer Manufacturing Company with a tradition of thinking outside the box. The company got its start during World War II supplying the military with bogie wheels for army tanks, while today it manufactures specialized precision stampings of all kinds for the auto industry. And between 1946 and 1957, the family-owned firm developed a most unusual prototype truck it called the Eisenhauer Freighter, featuring twin engines, eight-wheel drive, and three steering axles.

Eisenhauer Twin Engine Truck Chassis Plan

Eisenhauer is still in business. While they make parts for all kinds of things, including trucks, they don't make trucks anymore.

Via Jack

57 Chevy

Land of 10,000 Stories: Man drives $75 pickup to work for 38 years
KARE 11

Not everything is rotten in Minnesota. You may have heard about the ginormous Somali fraud investigation going on in Minnesota. I suspect most of the fraud is found in Minneapolis, not out in places like Prinsburg out in the western boondocks. Wikipedia has this to say about Prinsburg politics:

The last Republican candidate for president to receive less than 82% of the vote in Prinsburg was Gerald Ford in 1976.

Prinsburg Minnesota

Post Office Delivery Van

The Grumman LLV Has Finally Reached The End Of Its Mail Delivery Days — Revelations w/ Jason Cammisa
Hagerty

I didn't realize the LLV was that old, but it doesn't really get a lot of attention. It's like it's part of the scenery, eternal and unchanging. You might think that a standard production vehicle could do the job as well, or better, but United Parcel Service also builds their own custom designs. The fun part is that after Jason gets done telling you all about the LLV, he takes it for a spirited ride, just like he does when he makes a video about a sports car. Hooo, baby!

Other Hagerty posts.

Soviet Snow Machine 1963

Не для легких дорог... Фильм 1, 1963
Alexandr Zudin

Title translates as 'Not for the easy roads... Film 1, 1963'. You can turn on the subtitles and engage the autotranslation, but it doesn't tell you much. It was an experimental vehicle and it worked better than most others, but did it ever make it to production? I suspect not. Fuel economy wasn't that great. 900 liters of gas gas it a range of 600 kilometers, which works out to 3.5 miles per gallon.

P. S. The comments on YouTube make for some interesting reading.

Train hits truck with wind mill blade

Train hits truck with wind mill blade
Dave Hughes Farm

Seems like videos like this pop up on a regular basis and I got to wondering just how often this happens, so I asked Mr. Google and he says nine per week! That's near 500 per year! You've got figure that every time there is one of these collisions it's gotta cost a million dollars, and that's if nobody gets hurt. Besides the immediate damage, there are the delays, the disrupted schedules, the investigation, the penalties, and there is a good chance there will be litigation, even if it's just the insurance companies arguing about who will pay.

On the other hand there are three million trucks in the USA. Figure they're driving 50,000 miles a year and each mile costs at least a dollar, that's $150 billion dollars. Compare to that $500 million is just noise, especially when the true cost of trucking is closer to a trillion dollars.

Still, you'd think that even a measly $500 million bucks would bestir someone in trucking or insurance to try and put a stop to these collisions, or least reduce the frequency. Actually, industry ought to get their act together cause if they don't, the federal government is liable to step in, and then nobody will be happy.

All of which reminded me of this tune:

Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance
Men Without Hats

Why do I persist in thinking this is a David Bowie tune? Does it sound like him, maybe? 

There's also a cool mashup of this tune with a bunch of different dancing people. The voice is not the same though.

Fancy

Fancy Truck

Stopped by the body shop yesterday afternoon and this eye-popping beast was there. Photograph doesn't really do it justice.

Brink of Disaster

Collapsed Bridge
Chuck Pergiel

Via Liberalguy

P. S. Another video. Yahoo has the story about the Houzi River Bridge collapse.

1920 Oldsmobile Truck

Vintage Oldsmobile Delivery Truck

Did not find much information about this truck. It appears to reside in Ohio. Looking at other old Oldsmobile trucks, this one appears to be a 1920 model. Wikipedia tells us that Oldsmobile introduced a six cylinder engine in 1920, but looking at the short hood on this I suspect it is a four cylinder engine.

From Mac's Motor City Garage:

In 1919, the automaker made its next serious run at the commercial vehicle market with the Oldsmobile Economy Truck. Rated at one to two tons, the Economy was extensively advertised in the living-room magazines of the day and marketed primarily to farmers and merchants. Under the hood was an overhead-valve four of 224 cubic inches with 40 hp that was shared with some Olds passenger cars, paired with a conventional three-speed gearbox. Geared for pulling with a double-reduction rear axle, the vehicle was limited to 24 mph. Available as a chassis, a chassis and cab, or an open express, the Economy Truck was offered through 1924 and more than 16,000 were produced.

1946 White Semi-Tractor

1946 White WA22 Semi-Tractor

From the Iowa 80 Trucking Museum:

1946 White WA22
Engine: 386 Cubic Inch White 6-Cylinder Gasoline
Transmission: 4-Speed, 3-Speed Auxiliary
Top Speed: 55 MPH

This 1946 White WA22 was originally used as a moving truck. It rolled off the assembly line in Cleveland, Ohio in April of 1946. Its original owner lived in Beaver Dam, Ohio. This truck was licensed and used by Mayflower Transit until 1979; it had only one primary driver for 33 years. It has been in the Iowa 80 collection for a number of years, but was newly restored in 2012. The truck can get up to 55 mph, which was more than sufficient given that the speed limit where it mainly operated didn't exceed 45 mph. This White has one of the first integrated sleepers seen in production, and it is only 18 inches wide. Still, that's wider than the truck's narrow cab. To add the sleeper, they had to angle the doors out. If you stand in front of the truck and look at the side you can see that when the windows were open, bugs would come through; if someone was in the sleeper, they'd get hit in the face by bugs as the driver traveled on down the road. The windshield wipers are air-operated; air from the brake system is used to power them. That is how it was done until the ‘90s. The truck does have a heater which is a bit unique for the time. This truck also has one of the last wood-structured cabs that White ever made; in 1947, all cabs produced were steel. Truck driving was - and still is - a hard job. However, running a truck like this made it harder. It has a crossover gas tank which holds about 100 gallons of highly flammable gas and sits right behind the cab. Diesel fuel can catch fire, but not nearly as easily as gas. Drivers that got into a wreck would burn up instantly.

White 160AX gasoline engine

From Military Veterans Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin:

All Auto-Car, Diamond T, and White half-tracks of all types utilized the White 160AX gasoline engine.  An example is this 386 cu. in. engine that could produce 148 hp at 3000 rpm.

Mr. Lucky

pic.twitter.com/ez0lBFH1V6

— Bilbro Baggins (@Jbanklestankle1) December 27, 2024

LNG Explosion

Tank truck with 60 TONS of gas explodes in Ulaanbaatar
Chuck Pergiel

RT reports:

The accident in Mongolia’s capital has killed six and left 14 injured. A truck carrying 60 tons of liquified natural gas (LNG) collided with a car and exploded in the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar.

 

Truck & cryogenic trailer

LNG is about half as dense as water. Cooling natural gas to −260 °F will turn it into a liquid, reducing its volume by a factor of 600. Tanks are lightly pressurized at around 4 or 5 PSI (pounds per square inch). A single trailer can carry about 30 tons of LNG, so either there were two trailers involved in this accident or somebody got the number wrong. At least they were only off by a factor of 2, not 2 zillion. Not bad for an innumerate journalist.  Where is Ulaanbaatar anyway? Middle of nowhere, that's where:

Ulaanbaatar Mongolia

Note that just past the west end of Mongolia there is a short stretch of border between Russia and China. Mongolia is surrounded by Russia and China.

SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy Booster

SpaceX Starship Heavy Booster holds 750 tons of liquid methane (LNG is basically methane), so it's going to take 25 trailer loads to fill the booster.

Update December 2025 replaced missing video.

Edison Motors

Topsy - 1 minute tour
Edison Motors

Edison Motors started with an old truck and converted it to electric drive. Now it looks like they have built a prototype from scratch.

There are a couple advantages of this kind of setup. One is that you can get by with a smaller engine. You don't need a giant engine for cruising down the highway and for those times when you do need maximum grunt you have those big electric motors and their batteries. Another is that you don't need a mechanical transmission. Electric motors can deliver full torque at zero RPM. That's why this same kind of setup, minus the batteries, is used in locomotives.

The downsides are that the batteries are heavy and all those electronic gizmos are expensive.

Model T Bakery Wagon

Model T Bakery Wagon

Lady of the Gobi: trucking coal across the desert to China

Lady of the Gobi: trucking coal across the desert to China
The Guardian

Gives a different picture of life on this planet.

War Machine

Marib has faced several Houthi offensives, as the group seeks to take the Yemeni government's last major stronghold in northern Yemen [File: Ali Owidha/Reuters]

It looks like the gun was mounted on wheels so that it could be towed by a motorized vehicle. Evidently this guy thought it would be easier to maneuver if the gun was in the bed of his truck. I don't disagree, I hate trailers. They're a big pain in the neck. I am sort of surprised though. That gun probably weighs a ton, a lot more than that truck is designed to carry. That seems to be the standard operating procedure in the third world - load the trucks with two or three or ten times as much as they were designed to carry.

I'm not sure just what kind of gun it is. It looks like it might be a 20 mm antiaircraft gun.

Jigsaw Puzzle Pic of the Day

1958 International 405

 A fine old machine.

French Truck

1970-ish Citroen H Van

The H Van was a commercial cargo van offered by Citroen in the early postwar period. Debuting in 1947, it remained in production largely unchanged until 1981.

Unusual for a van, it was of unit-body construction, with no underlying ladder frame. This fact and the fact that it was front-wheel drive allowed it to have a long, low, unobstructed cargo floor, barely above axle-height. Supposedly the floor structure was strong enough to support a horse. The driveline was a longitudinal inline 4-cylinder above and ahead of the transaxle; basically a Traction Avant's powertrain rotated through 180 degrees. - View From The Porch

It's basically a blown up version of a mini-van, with the bonus of having the engine inline instead of crossways, which means simple repairs were quick and easy instead of being all day projects that cost $1,000. This would be the perfect vehicle for carrying a horse or a big, heavy motorcycle. Loading a Harley into the back of a modern pickup truck requires something more than a little push. 

I've been thinking that a minivan conversion designed for hauling motorcycles might be a viable business opportunity.

Here's a picture of a Traction Avant if, like me, you weren't quite sure what it is.

Traction Avant

A favorite of players in WW2 period movies.