Purrey steam truck and bus

Valentin Purrey is the most important french maker of steam trucks and steam busses. He was born in 1861. He works like engineer in Barcelone (Spain) and built in 1887 (he was 26 years old only) his first steam tramway. He came back in Bordeaux (France) to create his own company. First prototype of steam truck was made during year 1900 and sugar company was interested. This company did place an order for 34 vehicles in 1902 !
Between 1900 and 1910, Purrey is almost only builder for trucks with more than 5 tons of loading.
But after 1910, oil truck concurrency is more and more hard. Purrey is bought by Exshaw en 1915. The last Purrey truck was built in 1931.

Coachworks were made by Purrey. Those simutrans models are painted with historical pictures.
- goods : cover truck from Say company
- cooled goods : truck with insulated coachwork for ice transportation used by the company “société des glacières de Paris” and “société des glacières de Boulogne sur Seine”.
- oil :first truck for french “Deutsch” refinery (later french branch of “shell”, yes, a steam truck for an oil company !
- milk : truck called “la nourrice”, used beetween 1906 and 1970 by army for drinkable water supply
- bulk : truck used during Paris subway building
- steel : truck from company “Daniel” based in Compiègne
- wood : truck from company “Le Moal” based in Guigamp
- grain : truck with grain bags
- cars : delivery of tramway coachwork
- omnibus : for passengers
- postal : van with livery from newspaper “le matin”


source : “ces étonnants véhicules à vapeur”, writted by Lucien Chanuc, éditions de l'Ormet, ISBN 2-906575-25-9

Technicals datas in Simutrans :

back to french truck
back to passengers and mail transportation by road