Postal employees have had a number of motorized vehicles at their disposal over the decades, but perhaps none so cartoonish as the mid-1950s Fageols. Unlike today’s stark and angular Grummans, the Fageols looked like overinflated balloons on four wheels, and reader Joan Schoenly appears to have run with that idea with her lemon-lime ex-postal van.
“I dubbed her ‘Pure Sunshine on Wheels’ or ‘Silly Sally Sunshine,’” she wrote. “I couldn’t resist buying her even though I did not know exactly what I was going to do with her. I went back and forth between selling my artwork out of her or selling lemonade and I decided on the lemonade.”
Never seen a Fageol postal van? You’re not alone. Most online references to them come from people who have no clue what they are. According to James H. Bruns’s book Motorized Mail, the U.S. Post Office ordered 3,000 of the trucks, designated C-3-C6, from 1955 to 1957. Bruns calls them Dodges, but others have pointed out that Fageol actually built the trucks for the Post Office using Dodge chassis and front sheetmetal. Sources also differ on the chassis rating (half-ton or 3/4-ton) and wheelbase (95 inches or 97 inches). Whatever the specifications, they appeared not to stack up against the DJ-3A Dispatcher, which Jeep released at about the same time and which soon became the country’s ubiquitous postal vehicle.
Joan said her postal truck came out of California and thus had little rust to repair before applying the paint, though she’s still on the lookout for doors, windshield wipers, and some smaller items.