Trucking: Picking Up

As the U.S. economy turns out greater and greater mountains of goods, the demand grows for trucks to haul them.

By the end of 1968, truck manufacturers will produce a record 1,803,000 trucks and Jeeplike vehicles. Understandably, they are delighted about the present — a year of sales in excess of $4 billion—and see an even brighter future ahead. Said Ford President Semon Knudsen at the American Trucking Associations' convention last week: "We expect the total truck market to pass a 2,000,000 annual rate in the early 1970s and to reach 2,250,000 by 1975."

Knudsen has good reason to gloat. For...