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March 1943. "New York, New York. Department of Sanitation street flushing sprinkler truck." One in a series of photos taken by John Vachon for the Office of War Information documenting trucks in the Northeast. View full size.
The interesting thing is that the design of those street flushing trucks has barely changed since the 1940's. They are still a heavy truck frame with a large water tank in the back and a second smaller motor that runs a pump behind the rear axle (the reason for those large "barn doors" on the back of the tank). The nozzles that spray the water are identical to the ones you would find on a brand new street flusher today.
It's amazing how little trucks have changed over the years compared to cars. This 80-year-old vehicle would not look completely out of place if you'd see it performing similar duties in a big city today.
Snow plow, Suicide door and Semaphore signal. The monster front bumper is typical for snow plow mounting and is used by many city works trucks to this day. The suicide door in this case was an easy answer to deal with cab access. The semaphore turn signal, to the rear of the drivers door window mimicked arm signals and had a lever mounted in the cab most likely connected with a cable.
450 1933 Autocar Model UTs were delivered to NYC. See here.
___ FAT PENSION IS
____ TO FUND.
_____ __ COMING!
I wonder what the words are on the right rear door?
OUR ---
YOURS ---
KEEP IT ---
I can only guess that the last word is CLEAN.
It would be even better if the truck were in Flushing, as the headline could be Flushing Flushing New York.
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