Anthony Company Incorporated.
1912 – 1917 – While working at the Streator, IL lumber yard, William C. Anthony has the idea for a dump bed to be mounted on Ford Model T’s. Early production units are hand made, but demand grows quickly. To expand production Anthony Company is incorporated and production is moved to a larger facility across town. From 1926 – 1938, the company leads the way developing hydraulic systems of all kinds used to transport cargo, becoming a weighty player in the transportation equipment industry. Inventing continued and the hydraulic lift gate was introduced. It was the brainchild of Frank Novotney, a Streatorite and employee of Anthony Company. The name “lift gate” was copyrighted. (This is the era it is believed that these trailers were produced.) Post war, the Anthony Lift Gate was a the primary focus of the company.
These trailers had a very industrial leaf spring suspension and were advertised with a few different body configurations. The plate riveted to one of the remaining trailers says “Timken Bearing Equipped” with a Date and Serial location. Dates and history from the Anthony Lift Gates page and an article no longer on the web, but luckily we kept a copy.
We purchased this from a vintage literature dealer on E-bay. This is the only documentation we have of the existence of the Anthony Trailer company. Notice all of the different applications the add sites in the third image. Seems they had quite a few different models for all the different applications. Very cool!
