Vintage 1960s Professional Driver Decal 🚚 Embla Crest Semi Truck Foil Sticker

Remember Professional Driver Decals? 🚛 Professional Driver Semi Truck Decal, Embla Crest, Sealed on Its Card

Size: 3 1/4" ~ Factory sealed, little to no wear. ~ It is unknown if the adhesive still works, as that is usually the first thing to fail.

Here is a round gold-foil decal that was made for the people who kept America's freight rolling. PROFESSIONAL arches over the top in red, DRIVER runs along the bottom in red, and in the middle a blue disc holds a red-and-black semi tractor pulling a long white box trailer. It is stapled to a hang card marked EMBLA CREST, EASY TO APPLY-SELF-STICK and 69¢, sealed in a clear sleeve, and it has never been put on a truck. The cards come in peach and in salmon, so yours could be either one.

It is unknown if the adhesive still works, as that is usually the first thing to fail. It may require assistance, also known as glue, to affix. Please refer to the pictures. They provide details and are considered part of the description.

🛣️ Built for the Interstate

In July 1919 an Army convoy of trucks left Washington, D.C. to cross the country, and it took 62 days to cover about 3,200 miles, mostly on the Lincoln Highway. A young officer named Dwight Eisenhower went along. In World War II, as Supreme Commander in Europe, he came to see Germany's autobahn as a necessary part of a national defense system, and as President he signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in June 1956. General Lucius Clay's committee had proposed a 10-year, $100 billion program to build 40,000 miles of divided highway linking every American city with more than 50,000 people. Washington paid 90 percent of the bill, and every Interstate had to be a freeway with at least four lanes and no crossings at grade.

The first work started that same summer. Missouri says its first three contracts were signed on August 2, 1956, and Kansas says its paving began on September 26. The estimate was $25 billion over 12 years. The final bill was $114 billion and it took 35 years. The original system was declared complete on October 14, 1992, when I-70 opened through Glenwood Canyon in Colorado. Today it runs 48,890 miles. All through the 1960s, the Interstates were opening stretch by stretch, and a driver rolling down a brand-new four-lane highway in a rig like the truck on the decal was exactly who they were built for.

🏷️ Embla Crest

Embla Crest decals were put out by the Atlantic Emblem Co. of Walterboro, South Carolina, in the 1960s and 1970s. One of the Embla Crest cards prints the company's name and Walterboro right under the Embla Crest banner.

Walterboro began as a summer retreat. Planters on the Lowcountry plantations went to higher ground there to escape the malaria of the summer, and the first settlement was called Hickory Valley. Around 1783 the brothers Paul and Jacob Walter settled it, and the town was later named for them. It became the seat of Colleton County in the early 1800s. Its courthouse was designed by the architect Robert Mills. A railroad linked it to Columbia and Charleston in the 1880s. During World War II the Walterboro Army Airfield opened in 1942, and from April 1944 to October 1945 more than 500 Tuskegee Airmen trained there. When Interstate 95 came along in the 1960s, the town became a popular overnight stop for travelers heading between New York and Florida.

🚚 The rig on the decal

The tractor on the decal sits flat-faced and cab forward, the way the cab-over trucks did. White Motor Company had a cab-over design by Viktor Schreckengost and Ray Spiller in 1932, which Schreckengost patented in 1934. The reason was length. Highways limited trucks to 42 feet, and putting the cab over the engine and the front axle freed up several feet for the trailer.

🎁 About these decals

Every one I have is still sealed on its card, with little to no wear. Truckers, retired drivers and anybody who grew up riding shotgun in a cab will get a kick out of it, and it looks great framed on its card in a shop, a den or a truck stop office. The supply is finite. Once the last of these sealed decals are gone, they will be very difficult to acquire.