In 1896 the first Truck ever was born. Its not hard to guess the name of the first inventor. Gottlieb Daimler invented the motor cycle and then motorized trolley car, and then this way went on. Daimler named it “Phoenix”, a two-cylinder engine on rear and with just four-horsepower. Daimler with the help of other big guys in this industry put the first stones of big castles that today’s our lives are so in depend on them.
The engine which Daimler invented had the capacity of 1.6-liter. He linked the rear axel with a belt. just two helical springs protected the engine. this very early vehicle had the steering control with the leaf-sprung front axle by means of a chain. It used six liter of petrol in very 100 kilometers. What makes this invention important, is the base work of todays trucks. the belt drive sent the power from the engine to a shaft fitted transversely to the longitudinal axis of the vehicle. Now we can see the developed model of it on the planetary axles of the heavy Mercedes-Benz.
Maybach changed the location of two-cylinder Phoenix with 6 hp from rear to the under-driver’s seat. After that, engine was placed right at the front, in front of the front axle. Then the power increased to 10 hp with four-gear belt drive and a front-to-rear longitudinal shaft and pinion to the internal ring gears on the iron wheels at the rear. The journey of Phoenix went on. This time instead of hot tube ignition, the new low-voltage magnetic ignition from Bosch ignited the petrol-air mixture in the cylinders of the 2.2-litre two-cylinder engine, and the radiator had a completely new design.
If you think that was just a prototype, your wrong. These early trucks had their market, in the most industrialized country, England. After passing the “customer testing” (which in known this time as test procedure), these kind of new means of transportation could be a good alternative for the steam-driven vehicles. and in fact, it was 1901 that a truck proved itself to be superior to a contemporary steam-driven wagon in a comparison test carried out in Liverpool.
The real revolution for the trucks was happened by Karl Benz. In 1900, changed a van to a real truck, with three models: lightest version (1250 kilograms payload) was powered by a five to seven-hp-strong one-cylinder engine, the medium-duty version for 2.50 tonnes payload used a ten-hp-strong one-cylinder engine and the heavy-duty model for 5.0 tonnes payload had a two-cylinder Contra engine which achieved fourteen horsepower. All the types had the engine on the front, horizontally and it drove the rear axle via a four-gear transmission and chain.
We should all now be thankful of all the men and women who tried hard and with their overtime ideas, based the fundamentals for us, to leave with more convenient.