MARCH 2007 OLD TIME TRUCKS
Hug’s “Indestructible” Dump Truck
By Photographer & Old Truck Nut John Sponholtz

In the early 1920s, America was building one of its most important highways through Illinois. It was known as the Old National Trail. Today, we know it as Interstate 70. Back then, most trucks couldn’t survive the brutal conditions of road building. Christian John Hug, a second generation immigrant from Switzerland and a self-educated engineer, set out to solve that problem and built a truck in a blacksmith shop. After severe usage on the Old National Trail project, the truck gained a reputation as being almost indestructible. Mr. Hug began receiving requests from other highway contractors to build more of his tough trucks, so in 1922 he formed the Hug Company of Highland, Illinois. Over the next twenty one years, the Hug Company built about 4,000 trucks. The size of the trucks ranged from two ton versions in the early years up to a twenty ton version produced in the late 1930s. Over the years, the U.S. Patent Office awarded the Hug Company more than twenty patents for various design features used on their trucks. The 1922 Hug Model T pictured here was known as the “Special Speed Truck” (it had a top speed of 45 MPH). This model had a 34 horsepower, 4-cylinder Buda engine, a Warner 3-speed gearbox and a Clark spiral bevel rear axle. This Hug, which has a serial number of 42, was also equipped with a gravity dump bed and pneumatic tires. Its first owner was the Berenz and Son Paving Contractor Company of Bloomington, Illinois. They used the truck for over twenty years before parking it. The second owner purchased the truck in 1968 and completed the three-year restoration project in 1983.