What was a truck before it was a truck?

After Sharpless Worrall, the owner of the General Store and Mansion in Sugartown, passed away in 1885 his properties were listed for sale in the local newspapers and on large broadsides. At the time of his death, he not only owned the house and store here in Sugartown, but owned another store and home in Kennett Square. The next time you stop in to see us at Historic Sugartown, we’ll gladly show you the two broadsides that announce the Public Sale of his two properties after his death.

From the West Chester Daily Village Record, August 25, 1888

I was examining the notice for the sale of the properties at Sugartown and came across a phrase that I hadn’t come across very often. In the notice they advertise that the property is “supplied with a great variety of choice fruits and a truck garden.”

Truck Garden? I had heard of kitchen garden and market garden, but what was a truck garden?

I assumed, as you might, that it simply meant a garden that produced vegetables that would be carted by trucks into markets and cities.

And, mostly, you would be sort of right! But not for the reason you think.

That’s because the word “truck” in “truck garden” or “truck farm” doesn’t relate to the modern-day transportation vehicle, but comes from an older French word , “troquer,” which means “barter” or “exchange”.

Here in America, from about 1815 to 1915, “Truck Dealers” typically referred to farmers that brought in carts of vegetables and other food stuffs into the marketplace. This terminology was so frequently used that the word “truck” was often used alone to refer to vegetables. I found several news articles from that time period in which people use the term “truck” to refer to the types of fruits and vegetables that you might find for sale by these dealers and there are frequent advertisements for the sale of “Truck Seeds”. While the word, “truck”, was used in place of vegetables, it is clear in many reports that it extended well beyond vegetables like corn, cabbage, beans and peas and included melons, tomatoes, raspberries, and strawberries.

The terminology quickly disappears in the beginning of the 20th century. Likely, with the rise of the popularity of what we now know as trucks – the four-wheeled motorized kind – the word took on a new meaning to the public and the usage of “truck” to refer to bartering or to the goods that were being traded, disappears from usage.