Latest Auto News Blog: Transitier: the Crosley-powered forklift

Crosley-powered forklift

Forklift? Forklift. I had never found any reason to get the least bit excited about a forklift, at least not until I ran across Barry Seel’s photos of his Transitier on the Crosley Gang mailing list recently (right around the same time I spotted the Gasporter photos we ran yesterday – I’m just making this a Crosley-powered week). We already know that Crosley’s OHC four-cylinder engines started out as generator engines and eventually found their way into boats as well as at least one airplane, and thanks to Barry, we can add forklifts to that list. In Barry’s words:

There was a company in Portland Oregon, called Transitier, who built a 3 wheeled forklift truck powered by an air cooled 4 cylinder Wisconsin engine. The wisconsin was almost impossible to work on being so wide. Sometime in early 1945 Transitier contacted Crosley to supply engines for the forklift. The best I was able to find out that in July 1945 there were 125 Transitier Crosley powered forklifts purchased by the US Military. Mine is the only known to exisist out of that order. Later Pettibone bought Transitier and continued to make that style forklift with the Crosley engine up until 1968. I do not know where I found it, but I saved a copy, I found a notation where Pettibone purchased Transitier from Powel Crosley.
(Crosley Auto Club President) Dave Anspach found mine buried halfway up in the woods north of Reading, Pa. while deer hunting. It belonged to a mushroom farmer who purchased it in 1955 at an Army Surplus Sale at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. He used it to load pallets of mushroom into trucks up until 1972 and then drove it between some trees in the woods, and left it sit. The original tin block engine was laying inside one of the buildings. He replaced the tin block a couple of years after he bought the forklift, when it thew a rod thru the side of the crankcase.
It took a backhoe, and a very strong winch on my trailer to get it out of its grave. When I got it home I thought it was so bad, I might as well just scrap it. When I took the engine covers off all I saw was mud. I pressure washed the the engine compartment to see if there was anything in there. I could not believe it after sitting all those years in a damp woods, halfway buried the the engine was loose. Two hours later I actually fired it up. The engine had a broken piston, thats probably why the guy stopped using it. The clutch was completly rusted away, as it sits directly on the top of the trans exposed. It took a 20 ton porta-power to get the main mast unstuck. 6 weeks later I sand blasted it. It had at leat 10 coats of brush painted enamel paint on it, and when I got down to the last coat I found OD green paint, and alot of military markings. One I could still read, Gavabutu Ordianance Depot. I had thrown together a Crosley engine with all used parts, dismantled the trans, and hydraulic pump, and replaced the seals in them. I put it all back together and repainted it OD Green. I use it on my farm all the time.

The engine, by the way, powers the forklift via a screwy vertical clutch and transmission arrangement, then to the front wheels.