Refrigerator Trucks and Dodge Sprinter Trucks Sales & Services in Massachusetts

Before refrigerator trucks, Dodge Sprinters, used trucks and van body trucks; railroads controlled transportation of good across America in the 19th century. The railroad was the primary focus of technological innovation in an era when intermediate transportation needs were largely met by vehicles drawn by pack animals. Trains were great for transportation but lacked the ability to move aside from their tracks.  Initially the only option was to use horse drawn cars to get the goods from the trains to their final destination.

Finally self-propelled steam-powered vehicles began to evolve commonplace. While steam-powered road vehicles had little future, the pioneers in self-propelled vehicles were forced into developing technologies that are now taken for granted, including suspension, steering, and braking. The lack of convenience of the steam engine resulted in the creation of the self-propelled truck. The invention of the internal combustion engine in the middle of the nineteenth century truly boosted the vehicle’s potential (Gibbins 1978).

Before the innovation of advanced transmissions and gear drives for internal combustion engines, trucking was slow to establish its niche even as railroads were limited to rail interaction among city centers. While there were hundreds of truck manufacturers in the United States in the early twentieth century, those that survived (including Mack, Peterbilt, Chevrolet, and International) were able to adapt to meet the ever-expanding and -changing needs of the trucking industry. Drivers frequently started their own trucking companies and set out to make a living with a single truck with an open cab and solid rubber tires over treacherous cobblestone and dirt roads. Trucking companies emerged with increased demand; especially considering a trip between Philadelphia and New York was considered long distance. Companies with multiple drivers or company-specific fleets handled transportation of commodities among cities with gradually increasing ranges, corresponding to the evolution of the truck. The first major trucking boom occurred during the prosperous postwar 1920s. Not only were roads constantly improving and reaching more places, but also “balloon tires” replaced the solid rubber tires and bigger trucks with closed cabs helped companies travel farther, carry more, and do so with greater comfort (Adams 2000).

A number of trucking companies were forced to call it quits during the Depression, but those who survived got a boost from the repeal of Prohibition and the slowly reviving economy. In 1935, Congress entered the picture by passing the Motor Carrier Act, which authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate the trucking industry. The bill “ended the legislative contest between rail and automotive interests which had been raging in the halls of Congress for ten years.” The federal government had invested in a railroad industry weakened both by the Depression and by intense competition from the trucking industry, which had more flexibility of movement and the ability to undercut rail rates (Nelson 1936). This pattern was true in virtually every nation in the world. Since World War I, road transport had shown great potential, and rail tariffs were easily undercut by numerous emerging trucking companies competing on the open market (Gibbins 1978).

The Massachusetts Motor Carrier Act established freight-hauling rate regulations, limited the number of hours that truckers were allowed to drive, and oversaw trucking company’s range as well as the type of freight they could carry. Massachusetts is now home for great variety of Refrigerator Trucks for Sale, Dodge Sprinter for Sale MA.