Let’s take a quick look at a few vintage snapshots of a truck brand that may not be familiar to some of you. Corbitt, based in Henderson, NC, was one of those classic small manufacturers of the kind that have long disappeared. Richard Corbitt started building powered buggies way back in 1912, and switched to trucks as the field got crowded. He built trucks and some buses on a small scale (he never had more than 300 employees), and his assembly line consisted of a few trucks in progress hitched together with chains and pulled forward by whatever was the lead truck at the time.
Here’s a few conventionals from mostly the immediate post-war era. Corbitt also built some very wild COE trucks, but we’ll save those for tomorrow.
This is a short-nosed Corbitt. Most of the post-war trucks were powered by Cummins diesels, and by various makers of gas engines before the war.
Speaking of the war, Corbitt made some 5500 legendary 6×6 trucks for the Army. They were big, and powered by a giant Waukesha gas engine.
Here’s one on the go.
And one at a freight depot.
In 1952, Richard Corbitt sold the company because he was old and in poor health, and the one son who had been interested in taking over had passed away. The new owners liquidated the firm within a couple of years.
Those trucks look more professionally styled, and less ‘homemade’, than Dodge trucks of the same era!
Very interesting – I’d never heard of Corbitt before, and also having been in Henderson, N.C. several times, I had no idea a truck manufacturer had been located there.
Just did a little bit of research on Corbitt, and came up with this fun ad, with a Corbitt truck hauling the fuselage of Howard Hughes’s H-4 Hercules:
I wonder how many of those 5500 6×6 survived, i bet not many at all. What a challenge to track one down.
Paul thanks for all the commercial truck postings, keep them coming. I am determined to own one someday as they are so underrepresented now.
These trucks they made in the ’30’s, using leftover sheet metal from Auburn, are pretty snazzy too.
That has to be the sexiest heavy Hauler ever, and it has suicide doors just in case anyone might be in doubt!
I’ve seen this beauty in an article before. Wasn’t it a one off prototype?.
I thought I knew my obscure trucks, which nowadays thanks to the Internet aren’t quite so obscure, but this is a new one for me. Very stylish!
From the referenced article:
“The company was sold in 1952 to United Industrial Syndicate, New York City. They specialized in liquidating companies and liquidated the equipment and the buildings.”
Sad, but somehow so like the multinational soulless corporations of today.
Never heard of the marque–interesting to see that they held on even into the 1950s.
eBay search for “corbitt truck” has a whole bunch more photos and then stuff like replacement bearings and monstrous timing chains, etc.
More photos of hauling the Hughes “Spruce Goose” here: https://mashable.com/2015/08/21/howard-hughes-plane/
It’s amusing that the Corbitt moving the Spruce Goose is owned by “Star House Movers.” Well, I guess that moving the world’s largest plane is similar in theory to moving a house, but I can just picture Howard Hughes thumbing through a Los Angeles phone book and calling companies under the House Movers section.
But I guess the fact that house movers in California operated a Corbitt speaks to how well these trucks were regarded.
Thanks for the essay. More information for me about my old profession of truck sales.
Wow not a make Ive heard of, interesting