The Ackermann story, part 1

Wooden slat bodies and light alloy constructions

December 25, 2023

Vehicle bodies are indispensable for the transportation industry. Vehicle manufacturers generally only offer chassis with cabs, while the necessary bodies, trailers and semi-trailers are supplied by vehicle construction companies.

Ackermann from Wuppertal has not only made a name for itself with beautifully designed panel bodies, but also with a wide range of innovative products. Markus Hügle has researched everything Ackermann has had to offer in the almost 150 years of its existence in his company history. Part 1 deals with the beginnings up to the post-war period, parts 2 and 3 describe the period up to the 1970s and part 4 the last era up to the takeover by the US company Fruehauf and the bitter end in 1996.

Wuppertal, a city in northwestern Germany, is famous for its suspension railroad over the river Wupper, which flows right through the city center. In the days of the post-war “economic miracle“, the city was a center of German commercial vehicle manufacturing, with three companies offering the full range of truck bodies. They were the Blumhardt, Ackermann and Eylert companies. The largest in this trio was Blumhardt, with an enormously high export share. Eylert was the smallest and also the first to cease operations in 1973. Ackermann was in between in terms of size and was Europe's most important specialized factory producing enclosed aluminum bodies for transporting furniture, packaging, textiles and food. The company proudly referred to itself as "The Light Metal Specialist." All three companies had established professionally managed sales departments at an early stage. With sales offices and extensive advertising material, they were represented throughout Germany and also sold their products in other countries, whereas many German body manufacturers primarily supplied their immediate region. In this way, all three companies succeeded in establishing their names as memorable brands in commercial vehicle manufacturing.
But let's start at the beginning: In 1850, vehicle builder Carl Wilhelm Ackermann founded a wagon construction workshop in Vohwinkel. The city of Wuppertal did not exist at that time; it only came into being in 1929 through the merger of the two cities of Elberfeld and Barmen and other towns such as Cronenburg, Roßdorf and Vohwinkel. Cronenburg was home to the Clerck company, a specialist in chassis conversions that later also supplied Ackermann. At first, all kinds of trolleys were built, focused on agriculture and, of course, horse-drawn carriages.

The oldest photo we could find for this article comes from an Ackermann company brochure, which refers to the long tradition of the Wuppertal company. It dates back to 1894 and shows part of the workforce, apparently after the completion of a heavy iron-tyred trailer for horse-drawn operations.

Soon, however, the company specialized in commercial vehicles, whose customers were mainly in industry. Heavy, horse-drawn flatbed trucks and plateau low-loaders for transporting bulk materials, building materials and machinery were part of the product range around 1900. As more and more motorized tractors came into use from around 1910, Ackermann offered the matching trailers.

At the beginning of the 20th century, panel trailers for road transportation still strongly resembled railroad cars. The photo from 1912 shows an example manufactured by Ackermann with the coach box attached to the front wall.

A little later, the first enclosed special bodies for the then newly emerging trucks were also built. Furniture vans and smaller bodies for food transport were a particularly important area.

At that time, enclosed superstructures were built using the wooden slat construction method. A wooden subframe was mounted on the iron vehicle frame to support the body. This consisted of a wooden frame to which vertical wooden slats were affixed. The roofs were usually semi-circular in shape, which was common on railroad cars at the time.

Until the early 1920s, trucks still used solid rubber tires. The Benz five-tonner with chain drive shown here had an Ackermann panel body and the trailer with brakeman's cab, which was also used to carry personnel, also from Wuppertal-Vohwinkel as well.

The Ackermann advertisement from 1927 shows that vehicles for local transport were also built in Vohwinkel. The make of the basic vehicle can hardly be determined from the drawing.

The major disadvantage of this construction method was the heavy weight of the superstructure. This not only reduced the payload, but also placed enormous strain on brakes, tires and running gear of trucks and trailers in often adverse road conditions. At first, attempts were made to remedy the situation with larger engines and reinforced chassis, but this only made the vehicles heavier. The solution could therefore only lie in an alternative material, the magic term being "light metal" instead of wood.

The manufacturer of the basic vehicle was DAAG in Ratingen (1910 to 1929). The cab with rounded corners integrated into the panel body soon became a feature of the Ackermann bodies. The photo of the Daimler panel truck type DR 5d at the beginning of this article also shows this special feature.

This Ackermann advertisement from 1927 undoubtedly shows a Büssing, recognizable by the triangular radiator openings on the sides.

In the 1930s, Ackermann had gained a good reputation among furniture forwarders, and stately furniture trucks with matching trailers on truck chassis from various manufacturers left the factory halls. Along with the Schumann company in Werdau, Ackermann was the leading supplier of wooden furniture carts, which were traditionally large and elaborately lettered.

The "Type 80 six-wheeler“ from Büssing was available from the early 1930s. The example shown here with body and trailer from Ackermann must have been one of the first of its kind, as during series production from 1932 the side parts of the hood had two rows of cooling fins arranged one above the other.

This 1938 Ford three-tonner with Ackermann panel body, manufactured in Germany according to the American model, was in use in Berlin until it was probably called up by the military soon after delivery. In 1939, the Second World War began and almost all commercial vehicles from the private sector gradually had to be handed over.

The vehicles were the business card of every haulage contractor, and the demands on the lettering painters, who knew their trade very well, were correspondingly high. At the same time, the engineers and designers at Ackermann were eagerly experimenting with the new material of light metal. Other body manufacturers, such as Staufen Fahrzeugwerke in Eislingen, also made their first experiments with aluminum alloys. But the outbreak of the Second World War put an abrupt end to these efforts. Like all other companies, Ackermann was integrated into the war economy and produced now mainly standard trucks suitable for military use.

This Büssing-NAG was used by the Vienna branch of the German haulage company Gustav Knauer. The headlights were fitted with black caps that only let light through a narrow slit. During the war, this was intended to minimize the risk of being seen by enemy aircraft in the dark.

In 1943, large parts of the Ackermann plant were destroyed by Allied air raids, as were many other industrial plants in Germany. It was not until after the currency reform in 1948 that experiments with light metal designs resumed under the then-owner Karl Kölker, later supported by his son Carl Wilhelm Kölker.

After the end of the Second World War, trucks were in short supply. Everything left over from the war was used and it was not uncommon for vehicles to be built from parts of different origins. The hood of the pictured Mercedes L 6500, built around 1936, with an Ackermann body had foreign side parts, presumably from a Mercedes bus.

Ackermann's concept envisaged a frameless panel structure. The panels were solidly connected to each other by clamping profiles developed in-house and formed a load-bearing structure. Rivets and screws could be dispensed with and a smooth outer surface achieved.

The basis of this Ackermann panel truck was also a Mercedes type O 4000, built around 1935. The light metal body came from the post-war period.

The vertical light metal panels represented a well thought-out modular system that could be easily adapted to different wheelbases of the carrier vehicle and was also variable in height. In the event of damage, individual light metal elements could be replaced quickly and cost-effectively. Ackermann had this design patented. Its competitor Staufen also had a patent for light alloy bodies, but its concept differed from the Ackermann principle in that it used riveted joints.

Even after the Second World War, some hauliers continued to order bodies and trailers with a wooden slat construction. The two-axle trailer shown here is a typical example of this type of body, which was common for decades but gradually disappeared from the roads in the 1950s.

In the 1950s, however, it was still common to have a compartment in the trailer for crew members who had no room in the cab of the truck. The Ackermann body of the example shown was made of light metal.

Light metal superstructures soon became established. Although some movers were still skeptical at first and continued to order wooden slat bodies, by the early 1950s at the latest, only light metal was used because customers were now finally convinced. The need for new vehicles was great at that time, because the makeshift repaired or elaborately rebuilt pre-war vehicles and the old, heavy trailers had had their day.