When the Goodyear Blimp Went Shopping

Most Akron residents have seen the Goodyear Blimp at one time or another, but one thing they have probably never seen is the blimp landing somewhere other than Wingfoot Lake or out near the Airdock.

That wasn’t always the case. Back in the 1920’s when the company was first getting its fleet off the ground, no clear strategy had been formed for exactly how the blimps were going to be used. Everyone felt they would be a great promotional tool, and would be helpful in supporting Goodyear’s image as an advanced technology company of the time, but the whole concept was still new and in its formative stage. Of course, the first item of business was to paint the Goodyear name on the side in big letters.

During the infancy of the airship industry, it was clear that they were seen as new mode of transportation. While the large, rigid-framed zeppelins of the day were huge and not easy to maneuver, blimps were much smaller, (much smaller than they are now) safer (filled with helium rather than hydrogen) and much easier to handle. They could be landed and secured almost anywhere you could install a mooring mast—which, for blimps—did not have to be that big.

To demonstrate this, someone in the Goodyear publicity department cooked up a scheme to land the company’s first commercial blimp, The Pilgrim, on the roof of O’Neil’s department store on Main Street. We don’t know how much advance notice the public had of the stunt, but it’s not hard to imagine the stunned faces of onlookers downtown as the blimp made its approach and finally—a landing.



Goodyear airship attendants scramble to get The Pilgrim into position for landing.

Archival records seem to indicate this was about 1928; that sounds about right, since one of the photos shows that Polsky’s, which broke ground for its store in 1929, was not built yet. You can clearly see the Summit County Court House right behind the Pilgrim.

Whether anyone thought this had any practical use can’t really be determined. Company president Paul Litchfield did see a practical use for blimps as “airborne yachts”—and he stated that blimps could “serve a similar purpose for persons living inland as do yachts for those living along the seacoast”

A 1929 article in Flight magazine stated it thus:

“It is claimed that there is a great future for this type of and its mooring masts should be found at country clubs, private estates, etc., while the holding of airship regattas—in the same way that motor boat and yachting clubs now have similar events—can also be held with success. Personally, we think this small “blimp” type of airship possesses great possibilities from the sporting point of view, as is the case with ballooning—although, of course, ” blimping ” conies out a trifle more expensive.”

The portable mooring mast which was developed for use at any flat, level location.

To this end, the company even developed a portable mooring mast. The demonstration version of this was attached to a Ford, and used with some success. This portable mast would allow it to land in any flat level field of sufficient size; like a horse farm. Or a private estate. Or a country club. Unfortunately, the utility of taking “the lady of the household” shopping at her favorite department store was not demonstrated to a practical extent, either.

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When Monsters Prowled Goodyear Heights

This is what happens when you cross a streetcar, a bus and a truck with a 4X4.

Back in 1921, Goodyear had already established a worldwide reputation as an innovative manufacturer, not only of tires, but of a wide range of other products—including airships. The company had been at the forefront of industrial America in other ways too; Goodyear Heights, the suburban garden neighborhood that it had created for its workers, had been a model for similar developments both in Akron and all across the country.

So, when it came to getting those workers back-and-forth to the job, the company quickly realized that establishing a Goodyear Heights bus line was the sensible way to go. Of course, you couldn’t expect a company like Goodyear to use just any bus to serve the route, at least not for long. Soon enough, they came up with a novel way not only to move people, but also to demonstrate their technological prowess and demonstrate the performance and longevity of their most advanced pneumatic truck tires.

A lineup of Goodyear test vehicles. Though it's much larger, the bus at left uses the same chassis as the trucks.

The company had demonstrated the tires’ heavy payload capabilities through cross-country demonstrations, and they were looking for new ways to show off the product via the heavy demands of day-in, day-out 365-days-a-year transit usage. To do this, they created a Frankenstein of a vehicle that passengers would surely never forget.


The six-wheel version, with entry/exit at curb side.

The first version was a six-wheel transport, built upon a newly-designed truck frame and driveline—topped with a Peter Witt–bodied streetcar. To gain the needed clearance for the streetcar’s relatively low wheel wells, the entire body had to be hoisted up high enough to make any of today’s 4X4 crowd proud; entry was gained through a low-slung passenger door on the curb side of the vehicle. Since the bus used a water-cooled internal combustion engine instead of electricity, a large radiator was mounted onto the front of the huge streetcar body.

It didn’t take long for Goodyear’s new vehicle to get noticed. Paul Litchfield, the VP and factory manager for the company, and later to become its president, won much praise for the concept, as noted in a 1922 article in Automotive Industries:

“His conviction that the ultimate motor vehicle would be multiple-wheeled, taking the same evolution as the freight car, led to P.W. Litchfield’s working out plans for the first six-wheeled vehicles ever put into practical use in America several years ago.”

Since the six-wheel version was deemed a success, Goodyear decided to go one better in 1922, by building an eight-wheel version, with full four-wheel steering at the front. At the time, it was considered a marvel of modern engineering, though we are not so sure about how the vehicle’s looks were received by the people of Akron. Perhaps the best gauge of that is the fact that there were no successors to the eight-wheeled leviathan, and that later service routes were handled by more conventional forms of bus transport.

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