Divco Truck Company started producing delivery trucks in 1926. The main objective of the company was to build trucks for home delivery of milk and other products while making it as simple to operate for the driver as possible. In other words to produce trucks that were able to be operated in the “Stand to Drive” position with the option of sitting to drive if the operator wished to do so. To accommodate some of their customers, the Divco Company designed and produced a few special models of the Divco delivery truck.

One special request was to produce a truck with the “Stand & Drive” capability that had a small open style body bed on the back to delivery block ice. The truck would deliver ice to homes and to the company’s milk trucks in the summer if the milk trucks needed extra ice to keep their load of milk cold. As far as we can tell there were probably three to four of this style of truck produced and this truck might be the only one of this model in existence.

This truck was found in Illinois by a friend of mine, Mark Smazik. Mark bought the truck and took it back to his shop to restore it to its original condition. Mark also did some research on this truck and found out that this ruck was originally owned by a nearby dairy and he was planning on restoring it to that company’s colors and logo design.

Mark & his Dad worked on restoring this truck for about two years. During this time his Dad became ill and passed away. After his Dad passed away Mark lost interest in restoring this truck and asked me if I would be interested in buying the truck and complete the restoration.
So in August of 2015, two of my Grand-sons and I drove to Illinois to pick up the truck to bring it back to my shop. Since the truck was being restoring, it had been dismantled and pieces of the truck were all over the place. This made loading and tying down the truck for transporting more difficult. After four hours of loading and tying down the different parts of the truck, we were ready to travel back to Pennsylvania.

After sitting around in boxes and skids for five years we started to restore this truck in 2020. The metal cab was in very poor shape. Everything was pitted and rusted on the cab area and there was no parts of the body existing at all. So we took all kinds of measurements and pictures of the existing cab body then fabricate all new steel for the cab. We researched all kinds of pictures and files to come up with a body design that was fitting for the mid to late 1930 era. We then worked with a local cabinet maker to design and build an all white maple wooden body to haul 300 lbs blocks of ice. We took careful attention in designing the wooden body to make sure everything was right size to haul the 300 blocks of ice. These blocks were then cut into small sizes for the home customer’s ice boxes. They usually bought a 25 lb piece of ice.

It was very challenging to pick up a piece of metal and figure where it was to go since everything was taken apart when we picked up the truck in 2015. We had a 1937 Divco sitting in our shop that we could check things out which helped a lot.

Our hope was to be finished for the June 2022 AACA Meet in Beckly West Virginia. But we ran into a mechanical problem which set us back many weeks. We finally had the truck ready for the AACA October 2022 Hershey, Pa. Meet.

We selected blue colors that related to the cold ice product which the truck represents The truck has a 4 speed manual transmission. There is no seat and it is fully a stand to drive truck. It is like a pickup truck without a seat. These trucks were used up to the beginning of the 1940’s. By then most households had a modern mechanical refrigerator to keep their foods cold.