This truck was manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. Although this particular truck's body is a 1925 style, its engine was built on February 17, 1926, leading us to believe that the engine was replaced at some point between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, before Stuhr Museum acquired the truck from John Thieszen. A 1925 Model T Truck initially cost $485 when it left the factory. If a buyer wanted the optional starter and demountable rims, the cost increased $85, to $570.
The Ford Motor Company was established on June 16, 1903, by Henry Ford and a group of eleven investors. The company's creation was not a foregone conclusion in the years leading up to that day. Ford had driven his first successful homebuilt car about seven years earlier, in June 1896. Despite this relatively early success, Ford got sidetracked by his development of race cars, especially his 999 and Arrow. Ford also co-counded two other companies, the Detroit Automobile Company and the Henry Ford Company, before either leaving or being removed from the firms. It was only after many ups and downs that Henry Ford got into the right manufacturing mindset and found the right investors to get the soon-to-be successful Ford Motor Company going.
Beginning in 1903, Ford's company made the first Model A – a second Model A, of which three examples are here at Stuhr Museum, was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Along with the Model A, the Models C and F became big sellers from 1903 to 1905. All had 2-cylinder engines under the seat. From 1906 to 1908, before the shift to the Model T, Ford's Models N, R, and S became popular cars in America. All of these models had 4-cylinder engines under the hood. When Ford came out with the Model T in 1908, it became perhaps his favorite model. It was the best-selling automobile in America throughout the 1910s and into the 1920s, and it made the Ford Motor Company the largest car manufacturer in the world for a time.
When 1925 rolled around, Ford was beginning to lose business to General Motors and other automobile manufacturers. Despite the loss of the market, the Ford factories produced nearly two million vehicles in 1925. For the 1925 model year, the Ford line included the following style options (and prices):
Touring – cost $290, beginning on October 24, 1924; it cost $375 with the starter (which cost $65) and the demountable rims (which cost $20).
Runabout – cost $260; $345 with the starter and demountable rims.
Pickup – cost $281, beginning on March 4, 1925, when it was introduced.
Tudor – cost $580.
Fordor – cost $660.
Coupe – cost $520.
Chassis – cost $225; $310 with starter and demountable rims.
Truck chassis – cost $365; $450 with starter and demountable rims.
Truck with body – cost $485; $570 with starter and demountable rims.
Truck with stake body - cost $495.
Stuhr Museum's Ford Model T Truck was reportedly used by the Staplehurst Flavo Flour in Staplehurst, Nebraska. Flavo Flour was a brand name used by The Anglo-American Mill Company since its creation in 1910 to sell its Marvel flour mills around the country. The company advertised to the local farmer, miller, or business entrepreneur who was willing to set up a mill to process local grain into flour and to sell that flour locally. By advertising its brand name, Flavo Flour, above its Marvel mills, the company was essentially advertising for the local population who purchased and used those mills. Competing with Pillsbury and other nationally known brands, the Anglo-American Mill Company was essentially attempting to reverse the shift that had been taking place in the early 1900s, the shift from local flour production to centralized, mass-production of flour by major corporations. The company did not make its money on the flour produced, but it made its money on the mills it built and sold, and on the Flavo Flour bags it produced to hold the flour. Perhaps Stuhr's truck was used to advertise for the local flour producers as it transported the locally made flour from a Marvel mill to area grocery stores. A great description of The Anglo-American Mill Company from 1918 can be found in Printers' Ink, vol. CIV, no. 6 (August 8, 1918), pp. 45-56, which you can access here.
Notes
A wonderful resource for the Ford Model T is Bruce W. McCalley, Model T Ford: The Car That Changed the World (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1994).A nice website for information on Ford automobiles is the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village site. It has some great pages geared toward the model T. You can view these by clicking or touching here.
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