Memory Hauler: 1965 Johnny Express Truck

Did you want to be a truck driver as a kid? I did, so naturally I asked Mom and Dad, and/or Santa, for a Johnny Express. This 1965 Johnny Express truck toy can be found here on Facebook Marketplace in Golden Valley, Minnesota, and they’re asking $100. Here is the original listing. I could not resist sending in this tip, given my lifelong love of these things.

Here is one that’s listed on eBay for just under $100 – although shipping is just over $100?! Ouch. There are several listed on eBay, but none of them seemed to have the driver, so this one in Minnesota seems like a bargain, even though other parts are missing.

I can’t even convey (or is that convoy?) how much I wanted one of these things as a tiny truck-driver-in-training tot. I may have told my parents that I wanted one more than I wanted to eat, which could be why I’m 40 pounds under my ideal weight for my 6′-5″ height today. As you already expected, I still have my Johnny Express, and it still has the original box. Some things apparently never change with some folks, including me. It’s at my childhood home in another city where my mom still lives; otherwise, I would have taken photos of it to show you here. Mine is complete, and this one appears to be missing a couple of parts, but they should be able to be tracked down on eBay or other sites.

If your dog chews up the rubber driver figure, finding another one shouldn’t be hard; here’s one on eBay for just $15. You can see that the mirrors are both missing, and three of the load “stakes” are missing, so you’ll have some work to locate those, unless you have a 3D printer, which will be your best friend with a rig like this one. This forklift still in the box is tempting, but which one of you am I going to leave all of this stuff to when the time comes for that?

Topper Toys made the Johnny Express truck with many accessories from 1965 for several years, and I have to admit that this rabbit hole of looking at listings and things on eBay and other sites has me wondering if I should add to the hoarding collection. I never had any of the other trailers besides the flatbed seen here, which is said to hold 200 pounds, with an internal steel brace, but there were tanker trailers, some black cardboard tubes sold as a “pipe kit,” and many others. There was even a military troop carrier trailer. COME ON, I can’t get it. I can’t. There was a bridge kit that was five feet long, and so many other toys that were made by Topper for the Johnny Express truck that it’s fun to run across all of them again, so many decades after I got mine in the late 1960s.

Four D-cell batteries provided the juice (Tesla Semi, look out!), and I can still hear it whirrrrrrring now in my brain. Or I think that’s what the whirring sound is. Hmm… The controller is pretty straightforward, no pun intended. Unfortunately, this one is missing the decal on the stalk, and as they all are, it’s a little twisted. That’s how you turn the front wheels: you twist that end piece clockwise or counterclockwise, so yes, it has power steering! You push the stalk forward to move forward and pull it back to go in reverse. You can steer at the same time, so you could practice backing into parking spots on the floor that you made with masking tape. Or maybe that was just me. Maybe that’s why I still back into 100% of parking spots to this day, 55 years later. Thanks, Topper Toys, for making me a better driver!

This basic rig is just under three feet in length with the standard flatbed trailer. Of course, Topper Toys, the same folks who came up with the Johnny Lightning line of vehicles, offered a cargo kit for that flatbed trailer. If you don’t want a Johnny Express after watching this 1960s commercial here on YouTube, then I don’t know what to say. Maybe you just have better sense than I do, because now I want to start reliving my childhood and start collecting a few of these things. Have any of you had a Johnny Express truck? I know a few of you are actual truck drivers; any thoughts on this truck toy?