spistols said:
I do not have a Cycletruck of any sort yet, as I have not found one complete and cheap enough for me to restore. But my interest in one is because as a kid, after my paper route job, I worked part time after school for three years, in a deli/grocery store in NYC. Because of the locale, we delivered daily, and you guessed it, on a cycletruck. I can't even tell you how many times I jumped this monster off of curbs with a load of groceries, and even more so, how many times it had to get welded up!!! Well, that is why I want one, for nostalgic purposes.
I wonder if all of the people that have one or want one, have used these at one point or another in their lives?
Spistols,
Interesting question... here's my answer.
I grew up in a small town (pop. 5200), that was somewhat rural, anmd spread over a considerable area. I used to watch the US Mail delivery being done with a Cycle-Truck. We lived in three different locations throughout my childhood there, and all three routes were done in the same manner until around '67 or '68. At that point, they started using the little Jeeps that had right hand steering. So much for the cool Mail bikes...
My aunt had dated one of the postmen, an I used to run into him periodically while he was doing his route, and consequently, I also used to bug the crap out of him to let me take a ride on that Postal bike. He told me that this would not be possible, due to the fact that it was US Government property. Well, that didn't stop me from continuing to bug him (or several others that I knew from various places I went and ran into them). Long story short - I guess I am fulfilling my childhood dream. What was odd to me was that those wonderful old Mail bikes just seemed to disappear from the Post Office one day, never to be seen again. Several years later, my dad bought a car from a government surplus/salvage place in a near-by local town, and lo and behold there were two of the Mail bikes' carcasses lying against a fence there. Unfortunately, there was not enough of either of the two to make one ridaeable, and I was only 12 or 13 at the time, so getting something like that did not set well with my dad, so they stayed right there when we left. I don't believe they would have been the most recent generation of Cycle-Trucks that the Postal Service had used, but they were USPS ones as they still had numbers and the Postal Service lettering on them. I would think they were from the middle to late 50's. My memory isn't quite what it used to be..
In the end, I found the first of my Cycle-Trucks last year, and once I got it home, gave it a thorough going over and some new tires, I finally got my ride. I have ridden it frequently since, once in the Christmas Parade in Delray, and another time on one of the local Freakbike Militia Rides, and a good bit just around the local neighborhood. I get a big kick out of just riding it, and there are always questions from people as well as stories similar to mine about the association of how they knew about them. What is even funnier is younger people who are not at all familiar with them and don't have any idea what they are.
Finally, I just bought my second C-T yesterday, it is a '39 or '40 according to the seller, and will be here in a week or so. I a VERY anxious to get this one, as the earlier ones are really neat in my mind. So if it is a '39, I'll have the first and last year of them, which would also be kinda cool! I guess I'll be validating the year when it gets here...
Well, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!
And here's my first C-T (a '67 model):
Rat Royale
REC Elsewhere
