Life, 1920-09-23 · page 6 of 40
Life — September 23, 1920 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not satire or a political cartoon**—it's a straightforward commercial advertisement for White Trucks, manufactured by The White Company in Cleveland. The image shows trucks actively dumping construction materials (sand, brick, lumber, etc.), illustrating their practical utility. The text emphasizes White Trucks' dominance in construction hauling, citing their use by contractors, lumber dealers, and road builders across 156 cities and multiple states. The advertisement's appeal is economic efficiency: White Trucks supposedly deliver "the most work" for "the least money," backed by contractors' cost records. This represents early-20th-century industrial marketing—promoting trucks as essential business equipment by highlighting reliability, widespread adoption, and proven financial returns rather than through humor or satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
FIRST zm Construction Hauling WHITE TRUCKS Ir the whole field of truck operation there is no more drastic demand upon power, efficiency and endurance than in hauling crushed stone, sand, brick, cement, lumber, structural steel and machinery. Tons of material are literally dumped into the trucks from buckets, chutes or derricks. These loads are carried over torn-up ground, into and out of excavations, to places where the trucks must break their own path. Ma- terials must be kept moving. Deliveries are vital. Trucks work day and night. For years White Trucks have had a pre- dominant position in this field. They are the mainstay of contractors, of road and bridge builders, of dealers in lumber and building supplies. They not only stand up and keep going day in and day out, year after year; they pay dividends long after the investment is written off the books. White Trucks are distinctly a balance sheet proposition; their earning power is sustained. White Trucks are used by contractors in 156 cities. They are used by 431 lumber dealers; by 218 dealers in building supplies and by 224 miscellaneous concerns in the building and contracting field; 365 states, counties and municipalities use White Trucks on road construction and mainte- nance work. These owners know from their cost records that White Trucks not only do the most work, but they do it for the /east money. THE WHITE COMPANY, Cleveland comicbooks. Son