Carolina Freight 1937-1995

It's interesting really back in the 1980s and 1990s Kmart was a pretty big operation they were bigger then Wal-Mart at least at that time at least in the 1980s they were. Wally World was still up and coming back in those days and Target was pretty much unheard of. I posted that picture of the Carolina tractor pulling the K-Mart trailer. I don't know if K-Mart had there own private fleet or not I simply don't know. Actually back in those days K-Mart and in our area (I live in Cleveland, Ohio just east of you. lol) K-Mart and Hills would have been the bigger retailers, Toys R Us, I know Toys R Us had there own private fleet and I think both Hills and Toys R Us had warehouses in Youngstown. But I figured with the Carolina truck pulling the K-Mart trailer that K-Mart was a big customer of Carolinas. I know these big retailers all have LTL companies that they like to latch onto. Like Bed Bath and Beyond was one of Overnite's biggest customers.

 

Yes that's correct. Yes Brighton Michigan center is still there and the tandem dollies and tandem pup are gone. Although those tandem dollies Gordons kept for a long long time I mean even into the early 2000s they still had those things. When I started at GFS in 2015 our loads were coming from Brighton, MI and I never saw one in real life, but I think there were still a couple of the tandem axle singled out tire dollies still hanging around in the back corner at that warehouse. The shuttle drivers said those things were absolute hell to move around the yard. One of our shuttle guys said it was much nicer when they started changing over to the more traditional single axle dully converters. At the warehouse I'm at we don't have any of those tandem dollies I pretty sure the tandem dollies and the tandem pups are pretty much artifacts of the past. Early 1990s GFS started phasing out the tandem axle pups which they got rid of those in a hurry and went with the more traditional pups. The weird converter gear those were around for quite sometime I think 2005ish they started phasing the weird converter gear out. I guess the old timers said that the tandem dollies were a little bit smoother and distributed the weight a little bit better, but they were a pain to move around in the drop yard.

 

GFS had a lot of Fords back in the day they started with the WhiteGMC and Sterling mix when the Ford era was over and had Sterlings for a long time before switching over to IH and Volvo in 2005-2006 and then Volvo for about a decade.

 

@LTL Bull did You guys get any KMart trailers in at the Toledo terminal? You know like KMarts own trailers in at your barn?

 

I like it! It’s nice! Those were pretty popular around here with a lot of the municipalities back in the day, the city I lived in had 2-3 of those as snow plows.

 

These were 8000s but still pretty popular.
I like them. Sad to say the garbage packer trucks are all in the junk yard now and have been scrapped. The dump truck though is still around. I see it running around from time to time.


The two Sterling’s in the middle I one if not both of them are still around. They use them to pick up brush when we have big wind storms in the fall. I’ve see them running around from time to time. The ford and Sterling at the end are gone. To bad to.