Is the man driving the truck in today’s #stampoftheday a “doodah man” who told people “you’ve got to play your hand?”

Or is he up in Buffalo thinking he’s “got to mellow slow?”

Or is he just “a goin’ home back where [he] belongs?”

Quite likely it’s none of those things since these lyrics from Truckin’, the beloved Grateful Dead song are from 1970, 17 years after October 29, 1953, the day I thought this stamp was issued. However, as I was writing this post, I discovered that I misread the blurred postmark on the first-day cover in my dad’s album and the stamp actually was issued on October 27, 1953.
Despite that mistake, I’m going to write about this stamp because really like it and October 27 has already passed. Perhaps writing about is also appropriate because our current angst about delayed ballots and what “a long strange trip” those delays might create.

There’s three main reasons why I like this stamp.

First, it’s such a great example of mid-1950s Americana. Look carefully. The truck in the foreground feels benign, as does the modest road it’s on. Behind the truck and driver, there’s a farm and rural valley and then, just as the urban economics and sociology textbooks promise (and the Wizard of Oz portrayed), there’s increasing density until you see a smokestack, denser buildings, and finally a few skyscrapers at the core. There’s no air pollution, traffic, shopping malls, superhighways, tract developments, or suburban office parks.

The stamp’s familiar look also is due to the fact that it was designed by William K. Schrage, who over a long career at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing that ran from the 1930s until the 1960s designed a host of classic stamps, including ones featuring or honoring Mt. Rushmore, women in the armed services, the Utah Centennial, a beardless Abraham Lincoln, and Alexander Hamilton (to name just a few).

Second, I like the stamp’s inscription: “50th anniversary of the Trucking Industry,” because that made me wonder how, exactly, do you date the start of the trucking industry? Or, put another way, why would we date the start of trucking to 1903?
As is my habit, I started digging. I learned that first truck dates to 1896, when Gottlieb Daimler mounted a small engine on the back of a horse-drawn trailer. I learned that four years later, Jack and Gus Mack founded Mack Trucks (yes, those Mack Trucks) in Brooklyn. I learned that the Teamsters National Union, which represents many truck drivers, was founded in 1903 (via the merger of two competing unions). But I don’t think that’s what the stamp commemorates because it honors trucking, not truckers. Then I found an article from 1953 stating that the stamp honored the 50th anniversary of the American Trucking Association, a national group that has been a key pro-highway lobbying group in Washington, DC for decades. But when I dug deeper, I also learned that ATA wasn’t founded until 1933, when two competing organizations merged. And, while I couldn’t find when those groups were created, I’m making an educated guess that at least one of them dates back to 1903.

Whatever the reason, trucking still wasn’t a huge deal at the turn of the 20th century. In fact, the first cross-country truck delivery didn’t come until 1912 when a five-man team of Teamster drivers started in Philadelphia and – 91 days later—delivered three tons of Parrot brand olive oil soap to the City Hall at San Francisco. (This factoid that makes me feel much better about my two-day delay in writing this stamp.). Trucking didn’t really take off until around World War I, when the army turned to trucks as an alternative to congested rail lines. The shift was facilitated by the development of the both semi-trailers and pneumatic (inflated) tires capable of supporting heavier loads and faster trucks. And by the 1920s, trucks were beginning to be competitive with railroads for carrying freight. This, in turn, led to intense competition between the two modes.

Third, I like this stamp because the stamp has a delightfully odd connection to those fights.

In 1952, the Post Office was preparing to issue a stamp honoring the 125th anniversary of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, America’s oldest railroad. A trucking company sued to prevent the issuance on the grounds that it was giving free advertising to one of its competitors.

After a judge refused to intervene, the trucking industry began lobbying for a stamp that would honor trucking. That push was supported by Senator Frank Carlson, a Republican from Kansas who not only played a major role in making Dwight D. Eisenhower the Republican nominee for president in 1952 but also became chairman of the Senate’s postal committee in 1953 after Republicans won control of the Senate in the 1952 election. So it’s not surprising that in July 1953, Arthur Summerfield, the new Postmaster General, announced that the Post Office Department, which had planned to issue 12 stamps in 1953 would instead issue 13, and that the 13th stamp would commemorate the founding of the American Trucking Association in 1903.
Somehow that brings me back to where I started, with the song Truckin’, maybe because I’m “sick of hangin’ around and [I’d] like to travel…. [I’d] like to get out of the door and light out and look around.”

Unfortunately I can’t do much of that right now, so I just have to remember that: “Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me. Other times, I can barely see.” And, of course more than once in the past few months, it has occurred to me “what a long, strange trip it’s been.”

I guess all I can do now is “hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.”

Be well, stay safe, play your hand, fight for justice, and work for peace.