Pickup trucks sure have come a long way. In a piece written in August 2016 the crew over at Popular Mechanics took us on a walk down memory lane in a photo series they called “15 Pickup Trucks That Changed the World“. The beauty below really caught our eye. It is the 1925 Ford Model T Runabout with Pickup Body which was the first Pickup Truck produced in the U.S.

The first pickup truck sold brand new for only $281.00. Today, that is closer to the monthly payment for an “affordable” car. This vehicle weighed about 1,400 pound and was available in an array of the color black and the color green. Ford produced approximately 30,000 units the first year. (Almost 100 years later Elon Musk and the team at Tesla at one point must have thought that would have been a great annual production goal for the Model 3*.)

Of course, things got really interesting when Ford added a pickup truck bed a few years later somewhere between 1925 and 1931. It must have been exciting for many people who, for perhaps the first time in their lives, could take their stuff or at least some of their stuff with them wherever they went. Full size trucks at that time were very large and very heavy. The pickup truck was easy to operate and was very useful even though the truck bed was less than 5 feet long. If you were a farmer or business owner back in those early days, you likely would have been overjoyed at the prospect of having a pickup truck.

The photo above is what appears to be an old advertisement from McCord Manufacturing. If you look closely at the fine print you can clearly see the word tonneau which as you know refers to the uncovered part of a car or horse drawn wagon, hence the term tonneau cover.

And there you have it. The pickup truck has a long history and appears to be here to stay. That’s good news for a lot of people including the pickup truck owners who purchase the products our Worksport subsidiary designs, patents, produces and markets.

So, from the entire FNHI Team, remember this. We’ve got you covered!

*We are pleased to report that Tesla recently met its stated goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week. (For details on this see “Tesla Expected Model 3 Production“.

The post Through the Rear-View Mirror: The Dawn of the Pickup Truck appeared first on Franchise Holdings International.