Boyertown Auto Body Works was an American truck body fabricator located in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. The company primarily built buses and delivery vans, but it did build some ambulances, rescue trucks and utility vehicles; as well as a few pumpers.
In addition to the purpose built fire apparatus, some of the company's stock delivery vans were converted into fire apparatus by other manufacturers. Boyertown also built some large Civil Defense "Calamity Jane" rescue trucks in the 1950s.
History[]
The Boyertown Auto Body Works could trace its history back to 1872 through a series of carriage works. The last of these was Boyertown Carriage Works Ltd, established in 1911. The Boyertown Carriage Works began to include van bodies for motor vehicles around 1914, although horse drawn carriages remained the major product into the late teens. In 1926, the company was sold becoming the Boyertown Auto Body Works. In 1933 B. Frank Hafer and his son Paul bought out the other partners; the Hafer family would manage the company until 1978.
During World War 2, Boyertown built nearly 1000 ambulances for the U.S. Military. The company also built 1400 mobile machine shops and several hundred mobile shops of other types. During the 1950s the company built fire / rescue bodies for Civil Defense.
By the late 1970s the delivery van market was changing and demand for the smaller local delivery trucks the company specialized in began to shrink. Sales declined during the 1980s and the Boyertown Auto Body Works went out of business in 1990.
Their old factory is now today the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles.