Jewel Tea Co. bread truck was manufactured by Banner Toys in the 1950s; it was given away as a premium and is rare. ​

Bread company delivery trucks used to be as common in America as a police officer walking a beat. But both are gone today. And while there were some differences between companies, the majority of bread delivery trucks accomplished the same goal. 

One such company was Helms Bakery of Culver City, Calif. The Helms motto was Daily at Your Door, and every weekday morning, from both the Culver City facility and a second Helms Bakery site in Montebello, dozens of Helms panel trucks, painted in a unique two-tone scheme, would leave the bakery for various parts of the Los Angeles Basin, some going as far as the eastern San Gabriel Valley.  

Each truck would travel through its assigned neighborhoods, with the driver periodically pulling (twice) on a large handle, which sounded a distinctive whistle or stop at a house where a Helms sign was displayed. Customers would come out and wave the truck down or sometimes chase the trucks to adjacent streets. Wooden drawers in the back of the truck were stocked with fresh donuts, cookies, pastries and candies, while the center section of the truck carried dozens of loaves of freshly baked bread. Products often reached the buyers still warm from the oven.

However popular, the Helms method of neighborhood delivery was doomed, both by the expense of sending trucks hundreds of miles each week and by the advent of the supermarket, which stocked products from other (less expensive) bakeries that delivered once or twice each week. Helms Bakery ceased operations in 1969.

Fresh-baked bread is no longer delivered to neighborhood doors, except in the movies and on die-cast collectors’ model displays.  
Even die-cast collectors have a difficult time finding a sufficient number of die-cast bread trucks or vans to call a collection. Regardless of how many bread and bakery companies sent daily delivery trucks out to neighborhoods, very few of these trucks are immortalized in die-cast vehicles today. 

Many bread truck collectors solve this problem by collecting any toy bread truck found, including ones made of tin, paper, plastic, cast iron and die-cast. But, for modeling displays, die-cast remains the sought-after bread truck.

Matchbox Toys, especially for displays, led the way in die-cast toy truck collecting for years; however, Matchbox offers only a few bread trucks in its vast lines, and they included Lesney Toys and Dinky Toys. 

One Matchbox Models of Yesteryear die-cast toy bread truck to look for is the 1927 Talbot van for Taystee old-fashioned enriched bread. Manufactured in 1978, this truck is hot, selling for as much as $40, mint in box

To read the rest of this story, call (701) 883-5206 or 1-800-533-8293 to order the June TT&C 2011 issue​.

​Other features included in the June. 2011 issue:
• Scenes from the Fire Department Instructor’s Conference
• The Bailey Collection, Food and Grocery Trucks
• Refuse Trucks, Dairy Trucks and Ski Chairs
• How Low Can You Go?

At the 2015 INTERMAT Show in Paris, France, two new Liebherr excavator models made by Conrad were presented. And Conrad did an extraordinary job, since both the R960 demolition and R926 compact are superiorly detailed and highly functional.

Both models were accurately downscaled into the 1/50 scale. As typical for Conrad, both are really heavy models and the well-known massiveness is noticeable on both.

Liebherr R960 demolition
This excavator was especially a big surprise, since the last Liebherr demolition excavator model is quite old. And it was presented beside the original excavator. The original machine weighs up to 93 metric tons and is powered by a Liebherr diesel engine providing 326 horsepower.

The demolition excavator comes with a VH-HD undercarriage. This undercarriage provides the option to extend the track gauge up to a width of 4 meters in reality or 8 centimeters on the model. Conrad also copied the hidden hydraulic cylinders underneath. With this undercarriage, the excavator can quickly adjust to the maximum width during work or be fully retracted for transport.
The track shoes easily rotate while they are slightly tensioned. The idler is as in reality—spring loaded—and the sprocket features the Liebherr name on it. The track shoe width equals in reality the 500-mm shoes. On both crawler sides, Conrad indicated the access steps with an anti-slip surface.

​To read the rest of this story, subscribe to TT&C at: 
http://www.toytrucker.com/subscriberenew.html

or buy the online version at:
http://toytrucker.epubs.forumprinting.com/publication/?m=26494&l=1

Other features in the May 2011 issue include:
• Evolution of Toy Fair
• Putney’s Tonka Rest Home
• Collector Update Checklist
• Something New From Something Old

Mike Anderson, 66, of Aliso Viejo, Calif., said it all started 23 years ago when his mother-in-law gave him a collector car from the Franklin Mint. “That’s when I realized there were toys like that out there,” he said.
His real passion, though, was trucks. “I grew up in a family that had a manufacturing business and we had our own trucks.
“I started searching around for toy trucks, although I never even gave it a thought that they were collectible toys.”
His collection now numbers 2,000-3,000, he estimates. “I’ve lost track,” he said. They are displayed all over his house. “I was in the kitchen cabinet business all my life, so in my house, I had custom book shelving made for whatever scale I collected.” He mostly collects 1/16 scale size but also has various sizes from 1/64 to 1/16.
He has a bonus room, which is his office over the garage, where he had overhead shelving, U-shaped bookcases and display cabinets built. However, neighborhood children wanted to handle and play with the toys. “I didn’t want to be rude and say those are collectible toys,” he said.  “After all, they were durable.”
To remedy the problem, he bought Plexiglas and had it cut to size to surround the cabinet. “You could still see the toys but you couldn’t touch them,” he explained.
“I display my newer and customized ones, such as Smith-Miller, Buddy L and Tonkas, in my bonus room to show people when they come over,” he said.
At one time he attended toy shows in the Midwest, but ever since eBay, he mostly shops there because it is much easier. He said he hasn’t bought anything original for a while.
He vacations in Michigan each summer where he said there are lots of antique stores. “If I can find a decent truck, I’ll purchase it,” he said. “I look for something that is lower priced and not very attractive but is a solid truck. I bring it home, strip it and customize it. That’s my true love.
“I come up with the idea and gather the bodies, cabs and parts. I’ll take a Tonka cab and frame and mate it with a different truck body like a Nylint U-haul van, or a Tonka pumper body on a fire truck and mate it with a cab from a different manufacturer.
“I have the toy powder-coated, then I assemble it, add purchased parts or parts from my inventory, such as tires and wheels, and custom decals. If I find a truck that I want to customize, I may end up using the same old stock wheels or tires or try to buy some parts.” He added, though, it’s becoming more difficult to find parts.
His collection includes a number of steel trucks that he customized to be identical to trucks that were used in the kitchen cabinet company. “I painted them the company colors and had custom decals made. They were exactly like what we had in the business. Our first tractor-truck was a 1956 GMC, and Buddy L made that same truck. I have photographs of the life-size truck and the matching toy truck.”
His favorite piece is a 1954 plastic Ford truck with trailer cabover. “I had that truck as a child, but I don’t know what happened to it,” he said.
He recalls an interesting incident that happened involving a Marx blue plastic cab with gray steel trailer and red plastic gates. He was planning to attend the annual toy show at the San Mateo fairgrounds in northern California. “About two weeks before that show, I had a dream that I was playing with that truck that I had as a child. When I walked down the very first aisle, I found the exact truck in my dream, the same one I had as a child. I bought it on the spot. It was unbelievable.”
Another incident he recalls was when he was shopping in Michigan. “The guy wanted $33 for a Smith-Miller lumber truck. He gave me a 10-percent discount so I got it for $30.” When Mike sent it to be restored, he learned it was worth $600! “That was my first and last deal like that,” he said.
He said he is trying to be more selective about what he buys now because of space and prices. “I have to remember I don’t have any space,” he said.  
However, he added, “I just pretty much collect anything that catches my eye.” And where will he put them? “I’ll squeeze them in someplace,” he said.

Mario Quagliano holds two of his most rare metro vans, the 1956 Midwest Milk (right hand) and the 1956 Bond Bread (left hand). ​

Variety in Tonka trucks are illustrated here with delivery vans, delivery trucks, wreckers and fire engines. ​

You may not recognize the Tonka semitrucks in the top three rows, they are all quite rare. ​

The Hardware Hank box van is another rare 1954 promotional release. ​

Another rare Tonka in Quagliano’s collection is this Stix, Baer & Fuller metro van. ​

Here is the rare 1956-1/2 Bruce Floor Wax (left) and the 1954 StarKist Tuna (right) that was available through regular Tonka retail outlets. ​

The Bond Bread metro van is a promotional piece distributed only to the company’s drivers. ​

Other features in the Dec. 2010 issue include:
• Roland "Ron" Gleisner, Retired and Loving it!
• The Plastic Surgeon Car nut makes business out of collecting hobby

It seems that Mario Quagliano was destined to collect pressed-steel trucks. In 1959, his grandmother gave him his first Tonka truck, a white Thunderbird Express semi that quickly became a childhood favorite. Although he didn’t hang on to that first Tonka, real and toy trucks were in his future. Quagliano’s uncle and father both drove trucks for a living, and he followed in their professional footsteps at his first opportunity. 
“From the 1930s on, my whole family has been involved in the trucking industry,” he said. “My uncles and father were in the business, we did truck cleaning as well. I’m a driver myself. I started working for a truck line right out of high school in 1972. Just been around them my whole life.”
His experiences behind the wheel developed an appreciation for transportation toys as he took his first steps as a collector in 1986. While on a vacation in the Wisconsin Dells with his family, Quagliano stopped in an antique shop and, “I got the toy bug,” he said. “I did not buy anything in the Dells, but I came close. The prices were way too high.”

The Collecting Bug
A few weeks after that inspiring vacation, the suburban-Chicago native found himself searching through local antiques stores until he came across the toy that started his collection, a 1956 Tonka Suburban pumper. 
The toy was in excellent condition and still in its original box with all of its pieces intact. (Note: Tonka fire pumpers came with two side-mounted hoses, one side-mounted ladder, a hose and nozzle that was rolled around the reel and a fire hydrant that was actually used to attach the pumper to a garden hose. The pumper really pumped water. Other pieces that are often lost include the four mounted “dumbbells,” the fender-mounted siren and the red light affixed to the cab’s roof.) 
Quagliano thought the shopkeeper’s price tag of $135 was a good price. “So I bought it,” he said. 
With his first piece in hand and the collecting bug firmly implanted, Quagliano began to search out other trucks for his collection. It didn’t take long to discover the local toy shows and toy auctions in the Midwest. Soon, his large basement was outfitted with shelves to house his growing collection. 
His collection received a big boost in 1989 courtesy of an auction in Mason City, Iowa. “It was an auction of an estate, and the gentleman had a fairly large toy collection,” Quagliano said. He passed on other types of toys at the auction and concentrated on the pressed steel he had become so fond of.
“My son, Mario Aaron, was a big help to me at that auction,” he said. “I was driving a Buick Riviera [a two-door sedan] and we filled it from floor to roof with about 40 trucks.” The trucks were wrapped in towels and boxes to keep them from scratching in the well-stuffed car. 
“An auction in Lafayette, Ind., in 1994 was another great auction for me,” Quagliano said. “I found a box boom truck, and the Wholesome Bread van. EBay wasn’t around back then. Like just about everyone else, I’ve bought a lot of nice trucks off of eBay auctions in the last few years.”
Quagliano never had much luck finding toys at garage sales, instead, he concentrated on favorite toy shows, including the Chicago Toy Show at the Kane County Fairgrounds in St. Charles, Ill., the Circus Maximus Toy and Pedal Car Show in Kalamazoo, Mich., and the Toledo Toy Show in Toledo, Ohio. “I had to go where the toys were,” he said. Among Tonka enthusiasts, he picked up the nickname “Tonka Moe.”
After almost 25 years, Quagliano has more than 370 Tonkas in his collection. “In the last few years, I’ve set up as a dealer at the Kane County show to get rid of some stuff,” he said. “It’s just twice a year, and it’s fun to do the hotel trading and get together with the other dealers for pizza. These days, I miss the older fellows that I used to meet.”

The Rare Trucks
Along the way, Quagliano developed a healthy interest in rare Tonkas. The limited production of promotional-use trucks makes them quite rare today. Tonka was known to have issued “blank” trucks to companies who applied their own graphics/decals and then distributed them to employees or special customers. 
Or Tonka simply did the production itself, but never offered the promotional trucks through its catalog or regular retail outlets. Quagliano’s collection houses quite a number of these rare trucks, and he highlighted several of his favorites. 
The Trans-American truck was a prototype done in 1955 and had a red cab with a tan box trailer and the Trans-American graphic on it. 
“The Schenley Whiskies truck is really rare,” Quagliano explained. “There were only five made—just a promotional model. I’ve only seen three or four and they were well-played-with, mine is the nicest example I’ve ever seen.” The White box van truck was produced in the mid-1950s. 
His White 1955 Minute Maid semi is a variation with a very rare driver’s-side door decal. “They only made maybe four of the trucks for promotional reasons, and that decal is for a town called Plymouth, Fla.,” he said. “The others don’t have anything on the door.”
The rare Frederick & Nelson semi from 1952 features the cabover, solid wheel design of other pre-1954 Tonkas and has the distinctive green paint that Tonka used on its promotional models for Marshall Field & Company in Chicago. Frederick & Nelson was a department store chain in the Pacific Northwest that became a Field’s subsidiary in 1929. 
“The Dayton Company semi was made in 1948 for company drivers,” Quagliano said. “They never offered this truck to the public and only made 25.” 
The Bond Bread metro van is another rare piece. “Only a handful were made for the drivers, about 20-25,” he said. 
The Midwest Milk metro van was made in 1956. Quagliano explained, “They were made up by a company for the dairy. They bought blanks from Tonka, and Midwest Milk added their graphics. Not many of these were made, and they are tough to find.”
The Younkers Department Store semi was produced in 1953 and, like so many Tonkas that used parts from previous production runs, its trailer was made in the late 1951 or early 1952 period. “It’s the only black semi that Tonka ever made. Only other black toy from Tonka was a black camper from 1965,” Quagliano said.
The Republic Van Lines semi was released with some models featuring hand-painted graphics and some featuring decals. “It’s very tough to find one in good condition,” he said.
The Kroger semi often causes confusion. “There are only about 10 or so Tonka-made Kroger semis in the country,” Quagliano said. “Dunwell also made a Kroger that ended up being the production model when they outbid Tonka for the rights. Tonka didn’t mass-produce the Kroger, and it’s a rare piece.”
The American Breeders Service semi was made in 1958-59 and was also offered in 1960. “The company was from Madison, Wis., and there are only about five left in the country,” Quagliano said. 
The Hardware Hank box van was released in 1954 with a red cab and blue box. It’s cheerful graphics read, “Hardware Hank Stores and Warehouses, The Best for Less.”
The Bruce Floor Wax box van had a white cab and box. Graphics on the box read, “Smart Women Use Bruce Floor Wax Products.” Quagliano noted Tonka’s mixed use of parts from different years. “This truck is a 1956-1/2. It’s a ’56 cab with a ’57 roof and that makes it the ’56-1/2. Some of the private labels were only made that way.”
With so many rare and fascinating Tonkas in his collection, Quagliano did note the one truck that eluded his grasp. “I would have liked that Kroehler Furniture truck. But it’s probably a one-of and that’s as rare as it gets,” he said. 

Crazy for Trucks
His future plans for the collection include its sale, “Maybe I’ll take some of it to auction and leave some for my two boys if they want them.
“I was crazy for trucks since I was a small kid,” Quagliano said. “I collected toy trucks for fun not profit because I really liked them. Tonka was always my favorite. My goal was to accomplish collecting Tonkas from 1947 to 1962. I feel I achieved this goal, and I’m glad to share this with the collecting public.… I collected them because they’re an art form in 20-gauge steel. I collected just because I liked them.” 
Oh, and that Thunderbird Express truck that didn’t survive his childhood? “I have one in my collection now,” he said. “It isn’t the same one that my grandmother gave me, but that’s okay. I have the white one sitting right next to a red one on the shelf.” 

A large-scale Maisto RC Ford Raptor. ​

One of the outstanding Bruder Toys Mack Granite series models. ​