Car of the Week: 1938 Chevrolet 1-1/2-ton stake bed

“I don’t know how the box and the chassis got together,” says Julius, a resident of Greenville, Wis. “I believe that my great-uncle bought it brand new, and he had a cheese business in Birnamwood and Aniwa and he bought it for the business.”

But one day many decades later, when the old farm truck was out in the rain, the boards of the stake bed revealed the first page of a new mystery.

“I never knew what to make of the 10-1/2-foot-long wooden racks having been red, green, and then blue, matching the blue-painted truck. One day, while servicing the truck outside in the late 1970s, it began to rain and another set of letters vaguely began to appear: Leo Delakowski, with Wittenberg below on the 2-by-4-foot metal identification panel.”

Looking for answers, Julius opened his local phone book and started searching.

“The first [Delakowski] I called in the Appleton phone book knew them. ‘That’s my uncle.’ And he said, ‘His wife is still alive in Wausau.’ Well, when I got done servicing the truck or changing the oil, off to Wausau I headed.”

Anna Delakowski didn’t recall the truck, but Julius learned that Leo and Anna Delakowski bought a new farm truck every year. How did the bed — or its boards — wind up on Julius’s truck? He’ll probably never know.

The 1-1/2-ton Chevy truck carries a stake bed that perfectly served many farmers and other entrepreneurs with a need to haul big loads of small products, or big loads of a single large product. Julius’s 1938 Chevy truck bed still wears its original manufacturing tag that, although weathered, legibly states it was built in Indianapolis by the Chevrolet Commercial Body Division of Chevrolet Motor Division with a serial number 110895. The stamped Body Type numbers are worn and read 460315 or 460815.

It’s only recently that Julius came to the conclusion that the truck was purchased new by his great-uncle before it passed to his grandfather and then his father. All of these men have since passed, and Julius’ forefathers either weren’t available when Julius began asking questions about the truck, or simply didn’t remember the details of its past since it was little more than a farm tool for them to haul grain. To Julius, the truck is much more, and has carried great sentimental value to him ever since the 1960s, when he was just a kid.

“I was very glad to have an excuse to use the truck, because I wanted it to be out and going. I feared for it as a kid what would happen if it sat.”

Julius says that he was more interested in performing vehicle maintenance than his father, so he’d find ways to ensure the truck received what it needed to keep running. On one occasion, when Julius was around 10 years old, he volunteered it for 4H duty, which he knew would require his dad to get the truck up to snuff.

“I conned some repairs to the truck when I volunteered it to take hay and straw to the county fair at Seymour, so the truck had to be in good condition to go to a few different farms and pick things up. Mom and Dad had to take it to a garage then.”

With the truck freshly serviced, it was able to reliably haul their 4H supplies to the county fair. Julius even found himself behind its wheel at that tender age as he delivered its load around the fair grounds. Then, when Julius officially turned driving age as the 1960s closed out, he began driving the truck to school. With its use came more needed maintenance.

Many years earlier, when Julius’s father was regularly using the truck on the farm, he had an accident that damaged the passenger side. It was before Julius’s time, so he isn’t truly sure how extensive the truck had been crunched or when the crunching had happened. Julius just knew that the front axle had shifted in the collision and affected its turning radius.

“I just knew when we’d go to the blacksmith in Greenville, we always parked out on the shoulder, because it turned real sharp to the left, and it wouldn’t turn very sharp to the right,” Julius said. Once he started driving the more regularly truck, he took it to Accurate Alignment in Appleton to have the axle put back in place. The front tires have evenly wore since.

More obvious damage was done to the cab above the beltine and the passenger side of the stake bed. Over the years, Julius has traveled the country with the truck, and in his travels he found replacement bed hardware that was damaged in the accident, but he’s still looking for straighter stake mounts for under the bed. 

Julius started his longer-distance travels with the ’38 Chevy truck immediately after high school. He’d “See the U.S.A.” in his Chevrolet from east-central Wisconsin to college at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls starting in 1969, and then on road trips as far as Colorado and many other points nearer to Wisconsin. He’s seen many miles from the truck’s cab as he’s searched for more old cars, and ventured to salvage yards where he scoured for parts to keep them all on the road, all the while enjoying sights and souls across the country. In Julius’s eyes, the most important trips in the truck have been where it served communities and worked as a tool.

“There were a lot of times when I volunteered it when there was tornado damage... in the Town of Clayton and Greenville, and then River Falls,” Julius said. “There’s a lot of things that touched people’s hearts about things that truck did. For me, it was really a community service vehicle.”

Besides responding to tornado cleanup efforts, Julius said the truck has served as a float in parades in Appleton, it’s moved many families, hauled stone and gravel, carried scaffolding and large signage for his local Grange’s hall and much more. Despite its usefulness through the 1980s, the truck was parked around 1990 while Julius’s family contemplated where it would next go. It wasn’t until 2023 that the title was signed into Julius’s name and he was comfortable investing in getting it running again. Since then, he and friend Josh Mihna have gone full-bore into making it road worthy for new travels.

In the process of getting the truck running again, the brakes were replaced, the head on the truck’s second replacement 235-cid six-cylinder engine was replaced and the transmission, which was found to have a broken housing, was repaired.

Long ago, Julius remembers a repair shop had to beat the wheels in order to break them free and replace the tires. He’s still searching for better wheels without the pound marks.

Since the repairs that were completed over the last couple years, Julius has taken back to the road with the truck, spinning the odometer every chance he gets as the truck continues to work.

“It always could go 70 mph,” Julius says. “And now that Josh (Mihna) balanced the tires — he’s an excellent mechanic with knowledge and determination to make things work. Now it rolls along really good.

“There were two rear axle options; this truck must have the better ratio,” Julius adds. “Kenny (Buttolph) and I, when he lived at Tustin, would race his ’30 Packard... with the ’38. Neither could really seem to pull ahead of the other.”

The truck’s traveling ways beyond Wisconsin resumed last year when Julius and Mihna drove the truck from Greenville to St. Paul for the Minnesota Street Rod Association’s annual Back to the 50’s event. Julius also regularly drives it around nearer points to his home, but don’t be surprised if you see a weathered, old ’38 Chevy fly by your California or Oregon address. Julius plans to always have it on the road, intent on serving a greater purpose.

“I want it to be like a community service vehicle. It has to be out there performing, and if it’s doing things in the community and earning its way, making some other people’s lives better, that’s what I want. Just like it does for me.”

In the late 1930s, Chevrolet’s truck lineup benefitted from rugged utility and the era’s emerging automotive design flair. The 1938 Chevrolet truck embodied both practical functionality and the evolving Art Deco aesthetic that began to shape American vehicles in the Depression era and just before World War II.

When new in 1938, Chevrolet’s lightest truck, the Model HC 1/2-ton, was competitively priced at $592 before options. This low price point underlined Chevrolet’s strategy to appeal to farmers, tradesmen and small business owners seeking dependable and affordable transportation.

Exact production figures for Chevrolet light trucks in 1938 are harder to pinpoint, but due to the 1938 recession, sales were lower than in the following two model years. Chevrolet truck sales would rebound in 1939 and 1940.

Stylistically, the 1938 Chevrolet truck continued the same streamlined, automobile-inspired look that Chevy had introduced with the newly restyled 1937 trucks. Both trucks borrowed the passenger cars’ distinct Art Deco styling motif. The most noticeable difference between Chevrolet passenger cars and trucks was the pointed, vertical grille that had horizontal bars for 1938 instead of 1937’s vertical bars. For 1938, a new recessed gas filler was mounted through the cab wall.

Under the hood, most 1938 Chevrolet trucks carried a robust inline six-cylinder “Stovebolt” engine of 216.5 cubic inches, which has become revered for reliability and torque more than outright power. This engine was mated to a three-speed manual transmission. 

Other mechanical hallmarks included a solid front and rear axle with leaf springs, ensuring the sturdy platform needed for hauling and towing; four-wheel mechanical brakes; and a full-ladder frame for rugged load-bearing capability. 

The 1938 Chevrolet truck represents a key moment in the evolution of American pickups: the blending of accessible prices, emerging automotive styling and practical mechanical design that presaged the golden age of postwar trucks. Today, collectors and restorers prize these prewar Chevy trucks, not just for nostalgia, but for their straightforward engineering and authentic representation of late-Depression automotive culture.

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