Let’s face it, America was built on the backs of delivery vehicles. While we owe a debt of gratitude to the horse, for the last 100-plus years, we have been beholden to trucks and vans. While 18-wheelers still deliver the goods long distance, the humble city-based delivery van has always done yeoman service, and this Boyertown Merchandiser, which is based on a Chevrolet chassis, certainly has done its share of work with honor. Powered by a 3-53 Detroit Diesel, it will make all the noise and little of the power, but you really wouldn’t want it any other way, would you? Barn Finder Rocco B. spotted this solid van on craigslist in Fonda, New York. It doesn’t currently run, but it’s largely rust free and is listed with an asking price of $6,500.
Boyertown Body & Equipment Company was a longstanding bodybuilder from, you guessed it, Boyertown, Pennsylvania. Started in 1872 as the J. Sweinhart Carriage Works, “Boyertown Better Built” delivery trucks and vans supplied Americans with goods up until their bankruptcy in 1990. According to the Penn State University Libraries, they built everything from “bookmobiles [to] ice cream trucks.”
The seller says that this Merchandiser van was a Navy vehicle and worked at the Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia in maintenance. While the 3-53 Detroit Diesel doesn’t currently run, the distinctive two-stroke Detroit sound alone makes you want to give it a go. The 3-53 was named for the number of cylinders (three), and the cubic inches per cylinder (53), making for a relatively petite 159 cubic inches. What wasn’t petite was the 3-53’s weight, almost a thousand pounds. With around 100 horsepower and 205 lb.-ft. of torque, the Merchandiser was certainly a city van and not a long-hauler.
As an aside, does anyone else like to watch videos of Detroit Diesels running online? I’m sure I wouldn’t want to deal with the noise day-in and day-out, but it would be fun to have one on an engine stand to work on.
The dashboard looks appropriately ’50s Chevy, and aside from needing a good cleaning and maybe a coat of paint, there’s really nothing in the cab to refurbish aside from the single seat.
According to their advertising, Boyertown vans were built to last, with undercoated steel bodies and square wheelhouses that offered extra space for cargo. The roof was “insulated with fiberglass” and the “steel side panels [were] undercoated and separated by insulating air space.”
While this van doesn’t seem like the most practical collector vehicle in the world, it is certainly a piece of our transportation history worth saving. Vans like this were used and discarded, and therefore, we don’t have many to go around to remind us of how goods used to be delivered. If you have a little extra space and want to get an old Detroit going, why not?
Nice write-up, Aaron. I grew up near Boyertown and knew people who worked at the “body works,” which is how the locals referred to it. They built an amazing variety of bodies over the years on different chassis. It makes me happy to know their trucks are still out there.
Thanks, Todd. I wasn’t aware of Boyertown before this, so I learned something!
I also grew up near Boyertown. Small world.
I also lived near Boyertown for a long time and still go out to the car museum there. Which has some of the vehicles that the factory build.
It isn’t often you get to see a Boyertown vehicle go up for sale. So this is pretty cool.
Yes, I love watching Detroit Diesel startup videos on YouTube. Glad to hear I’m not the only one!
A “3-53”?? Good heavens, not sure where to start there, but 1st the van proper. Boyertowns, I believe, featured mostly Fords, but would convert other makes for the customer. During the 50s, America was in a transition to parcel delivery, and vans like this were a hot item. Most familiar were UPS, but home delivery was in its infancy, and never thought of the magnitude it is today when this truck was new. I was told you could get a 2 cycle Detroit in any configuration, from 1 cylinder, to 16, V and in-line.( obviously, no odd number V motors) I never thought I’d see a 3 cylinder in a road vehicle. These were more industrial motors and why the Navy may have gone this route. It was merely a van to take goods across a base, and the motor was adequate for that. Most all in the civilian sector were gas jobs. Parcel vans led a rough life, and were destined to the back yard as a tool shed, so any still with wheels is rare. Sky the limit here.
Just for the record, you can have an odd-numbered V configuration. See Honda RC-211 motorcycle. (V-5)
…”bookmobiles [to] ice cream trucks”…
These Boyertown bodied delivery vehicles were the platform for the first ‘soft-serve’ ice cream trucks… near the Philly suburbs it was Mr. Softee®! Everytime I see a Boyertown grilled van… now that’s conditioning!
I remember Cloverland Dairy near Baltimore delivering milk in these when I was a kid. They were everywhere.
Baltimoron here and when I was a kid, 5 maybe, we were left unattended, my brother and I. We would run through the cab,, in one door and out the other of the Cloverland Farms milk truck while the driver was up at the house. This was in the alley of The Alameda around 1968.
It doesn’t currently run…it never did. Any get up and go got up and went. Mashing the throttle on a 3-53 is like stepping on a rotten banana…and about as effective.
Cool rigs, great article Toth, good eye again Rocco 👏
I also lived near Boyertown for a long time and still go out to the car museum there. Which has some of the vehicles that the factory build.
It isn’t often you get to see a Boyertown vehicle go up for sale. So this is pretty cool.
You can’t swing a dead cat in the Boyertown/Pottstown area without hitting a Moyer!
I’ve got a 3-53 in a Dynahoe, and it’s a powerful beast. The trick is getting into the “sweet spot” 200 RPM power band. If this truck is geared right, I think it would make a great around-town rig just for fun. Detroits were known for being doggy until you hit the magic RPM number. In larger trucks, you generally drove with one hand on the wheel and one on the gearshift most all the time. 6-71 with a 13 speed Roadranger in a heavy 10 wheel dump truck tells me so!
Oh, the old brake drum on the drive shaft trick! ( lol) Cool old van. As an e-commercal vehicle saies guy. All different commercial vehicles interest me. Although the one with the independent rear suspension a few weeks back was even more intetesting! For the time, it was well thought out. I’m really surprised that this one lived as long in the rust belt as it has. I never had to try and get a 2 cycle diesel started. So that honor escapes me. And so I have also been spared the sound. Dad worked at the Greyhound garage when he got out of the army. (1950?) And had a, love/hate relationship with them. With the proper underpinnings, (drivetrain, brakes, tires, etc) The body would make a good racecar hauler. Plenty of room for sleeping accommodations AND tools.
Great candidate for a body-swap on a late model chassis.
I have driven by this van numerous times didn’t know it was a diesel, looks to be a solid vehicle , make a Kool hippie camper , price seems a bit high to me 5k max , hope it gets saved !
Neat old truck. The Detroit Diesel 3-53 has got to make it a rare beast. That was the same engine we had in our Army M561 Gamma Goats. Horribly loud! I still have my Mickey Mouse ear protectors we were required to wear. The Goat was complex and a maintenance nightmare, but was a pretty neat piece, the likes of which you’d never drive in civilian life. We swam them, but you’d better have a ton of weight in the trailer. I remember skidding off a muddy tank trail in Hohenfels and sinking up the tops of the tires……jammed it into 6WD, low, and set that 3-53 to screaming and it just augured us out of the muck, like that scene in Chuck Norris’ Lone wolf McQuade! Fun, Travel, and Adventure! Gimme my pay and my DD 214.
The Greenbank National Radio Astronomy Observatory required all their vehicles to be diesel in order to minimize interference with the antenna arrays. This truck probably IS one of a kind, ordered for that purpose.
As Howard and Fomoco stated a van with a diesel engine was rare in the 50’s and 60’s. This van is very rare and unique with that 3-71, especially as it is factory!! This van MUST be saved as is. I have seen many 3 and 4 -53’s and 71’s transplanted into 1/2 to 1 ton trucks, it is a great conversion. Getting old diesels started is usually NO problem. With a Detroit you must make sure the injector rack is free, or it will runaway on you!! Always have something handy to stop the air from entering the engine.. GEO please back me up!! The body still looks good and not rotted thru. Probably being based on a government installation and not being used on a lot of city streets has saved it from the salt?? This van will make someone a neat toy hauler that will be the talk of the show or cruise in. You might not get there very fast, BUT everybody will hear you coming!!
Yeah it is a small observatory and if it spent its life there it would not have many miles. This thing should definitely be saved. It would be an amazing attention-getter.
The ad says it has 3100 miles. Low indeed.
That’s a 53 in that truck. A 71 is a whole different ball game. Heavier engine, dry sleeves instead of wet, and a longer stroke. A lot of 3-and 4-53’s have gone into pickups and step vans but getting a 71 into one would be quite a feat. A 371 is half again as big an engine as a 353.
Most of the Detroits I knew had an Emergency Stop mechanism which physically blocked the air intake in case of a runaway. Once tripped, it had to be reset manually (against spring tension) on the engine’s intake plenum under the hood to be able to restart the engine. It was separate from the regular engine stop control which cut off the fuel supply. Once in a while a newbie would use the wrong engine stop knob and wonder why his rig wouldn’t restart (and, no, I never did that, amazingly!)
GOM, Thanks.. I should have added to make sure it works.. But it is very hard to get to with a screaming engine if the cable is not attached.
We had one of these in my fire department when i was a young pup.. It was an equipment truck. A 1959 137 inch wheel base Chevy/Boyertown BetterBuilt Merchandiser with the 235 with updraft carburetor. The thing that really impressed me about it was one day we were on our way to a fire and the guy driving went in the wrong gear, from first directly to 4th. That old 235 reached right down into its sack and pulled all the way up to speed without missing a beat! That’s guts!