I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950's-60's. As a kid, I remember the old chain drive/solid tire trucks still being in use. Mostly, these were Mack AC series trucks (sloping hood, radiator in the cowl/firewall). Sand and gravel companies along with transit-mix concrete companies seemed to keep those old AC series Macks on the streets until into the late 960's or early 1970's. I remember the sound of the chain drives and solid tires running on Belgian-block (aka cobblestone) streets in the afternoons, when the trucks would head back to their yards or batch plants, running light. The trucks had "half cabs" with side curtains, and in fair or warm weather, the drivers ran with the side curtains off. I was about 4 years old when I'd go to the corner to watch those old Macks roll by and wave at the drivers. When they hit a bump, running light, it seemed like the whole rear axle was airborne, and you'd see the chains whip and hear a different sound.
There were also contractors who had a light crane mounted on an AC Mack carrier, and those were in use into the 1970's as well. The transit mix concrete trucks all carried a separate engine to run the mixer barrel. The prevailing color for those old Macks seemed to be a medium or dark green, red wheel spokes and red undercarriage. As a kid, I'd wanted to drive one of those old Macks, as even then, I knew they were old trucks. Some of the firms running the old Mack AC series trucks were Gerosa (defunct, I think, a heavy hauler, rigger, and crane contractor); Tully & DiNapoli (asphalt, sand & gravel); Colonial (concrete mixers, sand and gravel dump trucks), Ryan (transit mix concrete).
In the 1960's, I recall walking home from the subway station (I took the subway to and from Brooklyn Technical HS and walked 1/2 mile from the station to my parents' house). There was a grocery store called "Key Food", a smaller chain of neighborhood supermarkets (which would not make a pimple on the ass of what we now consider as a supermarket). Key Food got its deliveries in the street in front of the store, and these went by roller-skate conveyor down into the basement. One trucking firm, Rojo Trucking, had a chain drive Sterling. This had a fairly modern fully enclosed cab and had a "box" type body. The Sterling also had a conventional design of engine and radiator placement. I think that was the only Sterling chain drive I ever saw on the streets.
In the late 60's, I was in college. We went to a junkyard for used auto parts as kids with limited budgets did back then. At this one junkyard, they had a chain drive Sterling truck with a winch behind the cab, and an "A" frame type of derrick off the back. That was the last Sterling I ever saw. No relation to the new Sterling trucks.
The last old style truck I recall seeing was in Manhattan, about 1971. I was working as a machinist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Research Center while an undergraduate engineering student. I used to get off the subway at East 70th street or thereabouts (I forget the actual stop) and walk east, going crosstown to get over to Sloan Kettering. This one rainy morning, I was crossing one of the avenues which ran in the uptown direction. Traffic was the usual snarl. As I crossed the street, I saw this double parked truck making a delivery to a neighborhood greengrocer. The truck was OLD, way older than anything I'd seen in a few years on the streets. It had the old style "half cab", and a classic outside radiator with bolted-on top tank. The windshield was flat, one wiper hung from the top, worked by compressed air. I looked that old truck over as best I could. I think it was either an Autocar or a White.
After that, the old trucks seemed to have vanished from the streets of NY and the outlying boroughs for good. Years later, I had occasion to get my Commercial Driver's License, and had to get the airbrake endorsement and articulated vehicle endorsement. As management, I had occasion to drive heavy trucks in emergencies, or to test drive them (a good excuse). In time, a buddy of mine who is also on the railroad with me got himself a U model Mack. This is a 1960's Mack, and has a 5 speed main tranny and 4 speed auxiliary, making 20 forward gears. It also has manual steering. It does have airbrakes. My buddy insisted I learn to drive his old Bulldog. His words (cleaning it up a great deal) were something to the effect of anyone can drive a Roadranger (air splitter type tranny). He defined driving his old Bulldog as being a real trucker. Of course, when I ride with my buddy, he handles the twin sticks and splits gears without clutching, working like a pool shark making trick shots. I am out of practice, so am more of the "grind 'em til ya find 'em" school. Turning to manuver in a tight spot separates the men from the wimps. Learning to shift non synchro'd transmissions (aka crash boxes) is one thing, but learning to split shift (both hands off the wheel to handle both sticks) is the real maker or breaker. I used to drive the old Bulldog and it made me appreciate what the truckers in the earlier days had to put up with. Then, I got to look at some of the old AC series Macks, up close and personal. 4 cylinder gasoline engine, possibly hand cranked to start, dual ignition (magneto and coil and points). Headlights were optional. Brakes consisted of an external band brake on each stub shaft off the differential, with the braking force transmitted thru the drive chains. Brakes were mechanical, no power assist. Steering was manual. Tranny was a crash box with a big lever and a "gate" so you could not miss finding a gear. Getting it into gear was a case of being able to double clutch, and do it by sound/feel since no tach. I'd still like to drive an AC series Mack at least once, just to see what the drivers I waved to when I was a kid had to work with.
Seeing the old rigs reminded me of my boyhood. Contractors had the old gasoline powered shovels and gasoline powered cranes. In the days before the arrival of the tractor backhoe or the hydraulic excavator, the track-mounted shovels were all they had for mechanized excavation on smaller jobs. Bringing a power shovel (everyone still called them "steam shovel", even if gasoline powered) on a job was something I recall my Mom taking me to see a few times when I was very small. Now, compact excavators outwork those old shovels, and make life way easier in every way, whether it be in terms of moving, operator comfort, and "dexterity" as well as digging force and infinitely greater productivity.
But, the new trucks looks like "Tonka Toys" to me. I do not like the streamlined, bland lines of the new heavy trucks. The stylized grills and the molded bodies just do not look like a real heavy truck ought to look. I am old school, liking the classic heavy trucks like a Brockway or Autocar, or the older Macks. Funny how this thread brought back memories of things I had not touched upon in easily 40 years. As I recall, there was an interesting progression with "dirt work contractors" in Brooklyn when I was a kid. Men who were friends of my late father came to the USA as immigrants from Italy and started on jobs as laborers. Pick and shovel work. They started little contracting firms with not much more than a stake rack or small dump truck, and a gang with picks and shovels. As they told me, the first big maker-or-breaker was getting an AC series Mack dump truck, usually followed by a power shovel and another AC series Mack tractor and low boy to move the power shovel (usually a Bay City or Northwestern). Once they cleared that hurdle, it seemed like the real sign they'd made it into the big leagues of contracting in Brooklyn was when they bought a brand new B model Mack with a DIESEL. This was the big leagues, a diesel powered truck with airbrakes and a closed cab. The contractors took the trucks to the sign painters and had them pin striped, often every cell of the dump box, and had the names of their wife and kids painted on the truck, with their firm name in bold "circus" or "tattoo" style lettering across the header of the dump box over the cab. If they were really flush with cash and looking to make a real statement as to how far they'd come in the New World, they had the radiator shell on the B model Mack chrome plated. I remember those B model Macks, and they were spit shined.
The next jump was not to a Mack but to Autocar. A big heavy Autocar with the aluminum radiator shell and top tank, long hood, and painted and pinstriped and lettered as per the B model Mack. This was the real badge of having made it. The old B models became secondary, used as yard horses and eventually junked. Now, even seeing a classic older Autocar (they built the last "real" Autocar at the Pennsylvania plant in 1980, then went to Utah and built "Tonka Toys" ever since) is a rarity. Seeing a B model Mack in active use is even rarer. It seems like the old trucks I loved to see and took for granted are mostly gone, or turn up at old engine shows. Maybe I am on my way to joining their ranks, having "retired" from full time employment this past June. We've got a couple of Brockways for use in and around the railroad. These are 1970's trucks. One is an ex roll-back truck which the owner sold me for one dollar. We shortened the frame rails and mean to finish setting it up for work on our railroad, one of those projects that's been back burner'd for years. The other Brockway is an interesting and somewhat rare snub-nosed tractor. Engine halfway in the cab, half out in front. It was a contractor's tractor, built to turn tight while manuvering lowboys with cranes and similar. It seems like all the old line heavy truck makers got bought out, merged, absorbed, and most vanished. I lost track of who's left building heavy trucks a few years back. Most heavy trucks were "assembled" trucks, so the truck maker whose name was on the front grille really did not make a whole lot of anything in particular. Mack was the one exception, making engines, trannies, axles, cabs, and frames. I am known to reach up and pat the Mack Bulldog on parked Mack trucks and scratch the Bulldog between the ears. For many years, on my desk at the powerplant, I had a piston out of a big Cummins truck engine and a Mack Bulldog. About 1978, I was riding my old BMW motorcycle on a fall day in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I heard an airhorn, and saw a Mack tractor behind me. He flashed his lights, and we pulled over. The driver was a man I knew from an erecting firm I'd worked for out in Wyoming (and been laid off from). He remembered my bike, and said he had something for me. He handed me the original Mack Bulldog off that tractor (which sported a new Bulldog). The bulldog was leperous with blisters in his chrome plating, but I knew he'd leapt into the wind for over a million miles, hauling structural steel, cranes, rigging gear, and cases of whisky (which we used to get on the jobsite as a perk). I thanked the driver and he wished me luck. I put the Bulldog aside. In my first year of marriage, I wanted to mount that bulldog. My bride accompanied me to a diesel shop. There, for the asking, they handed me a few Cummins pistons. The Cummins pistons had gone something like a million miles. The mechanics pointed to a cornbinder dump truck at the back of their yard and told me to climb up and help myself to Cummins pistons. This is how you test a new bride- if she willingly goes with you to a diesel shop and lets you hand her used pistons that you pick from inside a dump truck's box, she's a keeper. I kept the piston rings on it, but parted it in my lathe thru the wrist pin hole and faced it off. I machined a block of aluminum and mounted the Bulldog on the Cummins piston. Not strictly Mack, but it made a nice mounting. On the aluminum block, I engraved the fact the Bulldog had faced the wind and ate road dirt, snow, and bugs out in Wyoming and done a million miles. Now, I am retired, and as I type this, the Mack Bulldog sits on the top of my rolltop desk, looking at me. I've had a thing for heavy older trucks, ever since I can remember, so we are going back a good 60 years. Wife and I have 31 years of marriage, and it feels like we've gone over a million miles together with the events we encountered on the journey we call life. Still running strong, despite the wear and the miles.
On the other hand, they had to worry about breaking the drive chain. 
