The International Towing and Recovery Museum

We’d been thinking about visiting this museum for a couple of years now.  One of our friends, who is mechanically inclined and used to work on big equipment, had visited the Tow Truck Museum and he loved it…

So recently, we did a day trip from our home to Madisonville, Delano, Chattanooga and Hixson Tennessee…with our primary goal being this unusual but special museum.

This is an exterior view of the International Towing and Recovery Museum.  Love that creative bench out front!

This all began with a small group of dedicated towing professionals…the Friends of Towing.  They decided to recognize outstanding people in the towing and recovery business worldwide.  They set out to record the industry’s history, collect and display artifacts and memorabilia in a museum setting and inform the public about the business.

In the beginning, the Friends of Towing displayed the Hall of Fame (initially 27 individuals) and its museum in a semi-trailer.  They drove it from town to town, attending towing and recovery industry trade shows across the USA.  In 1995, they chose Chattanooga Tennessee as the permanent home for their museum…

So why did the Friends of Towing organization pick Chattanooga as its permanent home?  The answer is Ernest Holmes Sr.  He’d established a garage in Chattanooga and he quickly spotted the need to recover and tow customer’s cars to his garage.  With the help of others, he built his first wrecker on a Cadillac frame in 1916.  He patented it in 1919…the same year that he built his first production model…the 680.  FYI, the cost of this wrecker was the same as the model number.

This beautiful white wrecker greeted us in the lobby!  This is a modified 1929 Packard Model 640 with a 3-ton Manley Crane mounted at the back.  In the early years of the business, it was common to convert late model limousines and other large cars into wreckers.  This was due to their size and the power of their motors…

This is a 1913 Cadillac with a replica 1916 Holmes Model 680 wrecker assembly mounted on the back.  This former touring car was located in the late 1950s and it was transported to the Ernest Holmes factory in Chattanooga.  It was modified with a pick-up truck bed installed in the back and then the entire vehicle was completely restored.

FYI…The Ernest Holmes Company has passed through a couple of different iterations but the remnants of the original company are now part of Miller Industries…a successor in the tow truck/wrecker industry based in Ooltewah Tennessee.  Their annual sales volume is ca. $400,000,000.

A series of ‘Kiddie Car’ wreckers hang along a wall in the museum’s reception/gift shop area.  Some of them, like this model are highly collectible. 

This is a 1913 Locomobile equipped with a Model 485 Holmes wrecker assembly.  Locomobiles were built in Bridgeport Connecticut and this model cost $6,000 new!  It has a 6-cylinder motor which develops 82 horsepower.  The wrecker booms are rated for 2-tons per boom.  The Locomobile is equipped with outrigger legs to stabilize it when it’s recovering another vehicle.  It has the original wooden wheels and the brass lanterns.  Pretty fancy wrecker!

Note:

·       Locomobile was one of the earliest car builders in the USA.  It started operations in 1898 and continued operations until 1929.  The company manufactured small steam powered cars until 1903, when production entirely shifted to internal combustion-powered luxury automobiles.  Despite the early shift away from steam, all cars ever produced by the original company were sold under the brand name…Locomobile.

This 1926 Ford Model TT equipped with a Manley crane is owned by Scotty’s Carriage Works in Cameron Missouri.  That company has been in business since 1950 and this vehicle is on loan to the museum.

Note:

·       The Ford Model TT truck was based on the Ford Model T but with a heavier frame and rear axle.  In 1926, Ford built 213,914 Model TT trucks.  This model came with a hand operated windshield wiper!

The museum isn’t all about tow/recovery vehicles and the related business.  There are a scattering of old gas pumps as well.  The first one above has been modified as an eye-catching promo for the Museum and the second one is a Texaco sign…common enough even in this day and age.

However, I’d never seen Signal Gas or Polly Gas stations or pumps before… The Signal Gasoline Company started up in 1922 when a farmer started his first filling station.  He did well, becoming Signal Gas and Oil, and in 1931, Signal entered into a partnership with the Standard Oil Company.  Signal eventually became the largest independent oil company on the US West Coast…

As for Polly Gas, it was a brand name for the Los Angeles based Wilshire Oil Company.  That company operated in southern California from 1935 until the company was purchased by Gulf Oil in 1960.

This is a 1929 Chevrolet tow truck.  Originally it was purchased from a Chevrolet – Buick dealership and then it was used in an East Patterson New Jersey junk yard.  It was purchased from an estate in 1974 and completely refurbished.  It’s owned by two guys from St. Clements California. 

This red and white beauty dates back to just a couple of years before I was born.  It is a former 1940 Chevrolet Stake Truck (used for hauling cattle) that is now equipped with a Holmes 515 wrecker bed and a 540 high-speed towing cradle.  It is owned by Whealon Towing and Service in Fond du Lac Wisconsin.

This piece of eye candy is a 1974 Ford equipped with a Vulcan Cradle Snatcher.  The truck originally served with Bob London’s Wrecker in Longview Texas but in 1989 it was purchased and totally refurbished by Vulcan Manufacturing in Olive Branch Mississippi.  The truck was originally manufactured in Toronto Ontario Canada, hence one side of the truck features the Canadian Flag and of course, this side is all about the American Flag.

Leslie Bubik Sr. and his son Leslie Jr., designed the Vulcan cradle snatcher.  This was the first tow truck device that could remove a car from a parking space.  Police departments were an early customer…followed by car thieves and of course, the ‘repo man’.

Note:

·       I found it interesting that Miller Industries in Ooltewah Tennessee, the company that took over the remainder of the Ernest Holmes Company, also acquired Vulcan.

This is a Holmes W-45 Twin-Boom Wrecker on a Diamond-T chassis.  This workhorse of Patton’s World War II Red Ball Express was rated to pull 15 tons.  The vehicle was designated the Diamond-T 969 4-ton 6x6 Wrecker.  This wrecker was manufactured by the Ernest Holmes Company in Chattanooga Tennessee from 1941 to 1949.  A total of 7,238 units were built.

This wrecker served as part of the “Red Ball Express” in France.  In 1947 it was given to the French Army.  Eventually it was sold to a French manufacturer of towing and wrecking equipment.  It was returned to Chattanooga in December of 1997.

Note:

·       The Red Ball Express was a famous truck convoy that supplied Allied forces moving quickly through France after the D-Day invasion.  Staffed primarily with African-American soldiers, at its peak the Express operated 5,958 vehicles and carried about 12,500 tons (25,000,000 lbs.) of supplies each day.

Something for kids of all ages… The Museum has a massive collection of toy wreckers/tow trucks of all types.  They have plastic, cast iron, steel, tin and wooden models.  You might not be able to afford a spectacular real tow truck but these toys are also highly collectible.

This tow truck from Red’s Garage in Binghamton New York is a 1952 Ford F-6 with a 460 Holmes wrecker installation.  In the last few years of its life in New York, it was featured in several Independence Day parades…but it wasn’t driven, it was too special.  It was transported on a carrier!  In any case it found its way to the Museum in 2003. 

This is a 1979 Ernest Holmes 440 HI-POWER Wrecker.  Retired speedway driver Eddie Martin put the petal to the metal all the way around Talladega’s famous racetrack…setting a speed record for a production wrecker of 109.330 miles per hour.  He was hitting 130 mph on the straightaways!  He could only make one run as the tires were melting on the racetrack!  In 2005, after years at Talladega, this wrecker was purchased by Miller Industries in Ooltewah Tennessee.

This 1937 Chevrolet tow truck with a 3-ton Weaver apparatus is owned by Andy’s Wrecker Service in St. Cloud Minnesota.  The sign on the side shows it to be from Sauk Rapids Minnesota.  How about that old AAA emblem on the side!

FYI...The Museum also features a long well lighted hallway between the exhibits and the Reception Area/Gift Shop that displays photos of those in and related to the towing and recovery business who have been selected as members of the industry’s Hall of Fame.  Women were very well represented.  Other than the USA, I noted Hall of Fame inductees from Canada, England, Scotland, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Japan, Poland and France.

Dad’s is the ‘granddaddy’ of wreckers!  A 1953 Holmes W-70 (70 ton) wrecker apparatus is mounted on a 1961 Autocar with a 180 Cummins Diesel.  This was the largest mechanical wrecker ever built.  This truck and Holmes wrecker was completely restored at a cost of $100,000!

Note:

·       The Autocar Company is an American company that today manufactures severe-duty (heavy duty) vocational trucks.  The company was started in 1897 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania as an early manufacturer of automobiles as well as trucks beginning in 1899.  Autocar No. 1 is in the collection at the Smithsonian.  The company’s 1899 truck was the first motor truck ever produced for sale in the USA.  Autocar is the oldest surviving motor vehicle brand in the Western Hemisphere.     

This is a 1970 Cony that was manufactured by Aichi Kokuki (now part of Nissan). It was modeled after a Holmes Commander 1200.  This little tow truck was found abandoned but was saved and restored.  This rebuilt tow truck was tested by towing a Ford Escort.  It’s participated in many parades and has been displayed in a number of tow/recovery conventions.

Note:  

·       The Towing/Recovery Industry is really active with a number of conventions around the USA every year.  If you’re curious, you can check out the following convention schedule for 2019:  https://liftmarketinggroup.com/2019-tow-show-schedule/.

Love the color of the O’Hare Truck Services Inc. tow truck.  This vehicle began life as a 1929 Chrysler 5 window coupe.  The Chrysler-Plymouth dealership that converted it to a tow truck was based in Oak Park Illinois. (Chrysler never built a truck) This vehicle was in continuous use from 1930 until 1971 when the dealership closed.  It took 2 years to restore!

For my last entry, I decided to feature this 1935 Ford Tow Truck…with the ‘eyelash’ head lights and a greyhound hood ornament.  Owned by Rogner’s Garage in Palatine Illinois, it took 4 years to refurbish and rebuild this handsome vehicle.  Originally it was a 1-ton pick-up truck.  The pick-up bed was removed and replaced with a Ford Service Body Model 229 with a 1.5-ton Weaver Crane.  Weaver was a competitor of the Ernest Holmes Company.  Nice transformation!

We really enjoyed our self-guided tour of this specialty museum.  The tour began with a short and informative film.  The museum is open 7 days a week but hours vary with the season.  Adult admission is $10.00, Seniors and Military $9.00, AAA Members $8.50 and children from 6 – 14 are $6.00.  

The International Towing and Recovery Museum is located at 3315 Broad Street in Chattanooga Tennessee.  Phone: 423-267-3132.  Website: www.towingmuseum.com. 

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by to see what we’ve been up to!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave