1930 Package truck ID?

[Tommo]

Gerry,
C = Chassis only
You're probably right and it's not a thing I had considered as all importers into NZ had to by law include NZ content where-ever possible and as a result most sidecar bodies were made here in NZ especially after about 1928 when the deepression started to hit. The more NZ content your products had the better chance you had at securing more Import licence.
I suppose that it follows that if you ordered a sidecar chassis to replace a damaged one it would arrive with no numbers or letter code and be like crankcases and frames but if it left the factory attached to a bike as a chassis only it would be stamped 30MC****

[Sargehere]

Thanks, Tommo. Glad we could agree on that! Interesting, the "NZ content" consideration!

This discussion made me realize that the Package Trucks I know of with no numbers at all (usually dealer-built "Dead Horse Wagon" recovery vehicles) are probably the result of unnumbered "spare parts" factory-replacement M frames and springs being combined with all the hardware and bits left from another sidecar, even a passenger sidecar, like perhaps the fender and axle bits and even frame brace, they all being used to create a Package Truck from a Passenger Sidecar.

If the frame came right through from Milwaukee as a replacement part, it wouldn't have any numbers stamped on it. Most American jurisdictions didn't / don't require sidecars to be registered separately, like 'trailers' and have numbers or papers; they're just an accessory bolted to the bike. I know of two Dead Horse Wagons built decades ago by dealers, and neither has a frame number. Now I think I know why. Thanks for helping to stir the the leetle gray cells.

[Tommo]

This does bring up the interesting thought that if the sidecar left the factory as a chassis only does it mean that it has to be judged in that condition today.
The judging rules say as it left the factory don't they?
Maybe nobody will want a sidecar with a C suffix now.

[D.A.Bagin]

Last thing I heard was they don't judge accessories and a sidecar is an accessory

[Sargehere]

According to the rules, "sidecars don't count," as long as they don't detract from the bike, which is the only thing getting judged.

AMCA Handbook of Judging: "SECTION VI: Guidelines, paragraph 12 "Supplementary (add-on) accessories typicallly do not replace standard equipment, and may be items available from the factory or other suppliers in the model year. Such components are accepted without judging unless they are period incorrect or significantly detract from the overall appearance of the motorcycle due to improper condition, modification, or fitment. Examples of supplementary accessories include such things as saddlebags, luggage rack, auxiliary lighting, windshield, sidecar, (emphasis added) or decorative items."

So, as long as it fits the model year and doesn't detract from the overall appearance, you could have a homemade body, or a commercial body on your chassis, or a modern repop body (a la L&W), correctly finished-out. Or, I see no deduction for a correct-era replacement sidecar frame with no numbers at all, correctly completed with a full kit of correct bits.

In the case of an "MC," or "LEC"-stamped Harley sidecar frame, I couldn't see a deduction if you displayed your combination on judging field with no body at all! That would, at least, be "the way it left the factory the first time!"

[Chris Haynes]

Here are some pictures of the unit in question.

[Sargehere]

No better pics of the Unit In Question's body, Chris? Doesn't look like steel-over-wood, but to be a metal box. That's the interior, standing on end somewhere, photo turned sideways, I take it (?) "Course, it doesn't mean anything. A chassis could have been mated up with a body at any point.

[Chris Haynes]

The box is skinned with steel. Those are the only photos I have seen of it.

[Robert Luland]

Guys, I’ve been following this thread from the beginning and I want to throw an idea at ya. When I buy my service vehicles from Ford, I purchase a chassis cab. There’s nothing there but the cab. The dealer sends it out to an aftermarket vendor to have a body of our choice put on it and then it’s returned to our dealer for delivery. Who’s to say that Harley didn’t do the same thing? After all it was a commercial application? Everyone was different. Vendors were given the dimensions of the two frames and clearances available and it was up to the customer to pick and choose the body they wanted. Not to say the motor company didn’t end the sale. They would bid the contract and deliver on it; the same way My Ford dealer does it today. I highly doubt that Harley even built the side car bodies. They were contracted out to a firm two blocks down the street per say and then returned to the factory for delivery, thus the reason why none of the bodies appear in available documentation. Just my take on it. Bob L.

[Sargehere]

You're right, Bob. There's no question that the MoCo did sell complete sidecars, passenger and Package Trucks, that came with bodies they provided, which were indeed built by a firm "two blocks down the street" (by Abresh Body Co. of Milwaukee, in the case of the Big Twin "LE" sidecars, by Goulding for the "LS" 45 sidecars) during the '30s and '40s. Those factory-supplied bodies even had little, oval brass plates (behind the seat in the case of passenger sidecars) held on with two screws. It had the same number as the one stamped on the sidecar's frame, and a tiny "Bar & Shield" stamped on it, just to make it official. (see Palmer ppg. 84 & 85)

When someone ordered a bare chassis through their dealer, say a battery shop that was going to build an "advertisement" package truck that looked like a big car battery on it, or a photography studio that had a giant "camera"-looking body built, (we've all seen the photos in Earlyriders or Yesterdaze) they got an "MC" stamped sidecar: Package Truck, bare chassis. Palmer even explains it, on pages 520 and 531, for two: look at the last four models listed for years 1937 and '38. Chris questioned whether that lettering scheme held true all the way back to 1930, which was the year he axed about, and I'm certain that it did; that they didn't change it suddenly.

[MeanGene]

As I stated on another forum, truck and ambulance, etc., "cab and chassis" are actually incomplete vehicles until the body is added, then they are weighed and registered. When I was a kid my mom worked for an outfit that built school bus chassis's, so they didn't even have a cab. They had a little bolt-on platform with a seat , seat belt and a windshield, and they got driven to the coachbuilder's factory that way.
My gramps used to buy new REO trucks from the factory in the fifties, and would load a couple guys in his pickup in New York, drive them to Lansing to pick up the cab & chassis and drive them home, clamp-on taillights & flaps and temp "incomplete" tags