| | First truck produced by Karl Benz |
In the 1890's, it was half a day's journey from Cannstatt, where Daimler and his ingenious design engineer Maybach worked, to Mannheim, where Karl Benz was pursuing much the same ideas as Daimler. Benz and Daimler never met, but it can be taken for granted that they kept a watchful eye on each other. Benz's three-wheeled Patent Motor Car and Daimler's motorised carriage had after all appeared on the scene at almost the same time ten years earlier. Benz built the first bus in 1895. In 1896 the two automotive pioneers again worked on similar ideas: Daimler launched his first truck, Benz presented his "combination delivery vehicle", the first lightweight truck which today would fall into the category of vans.
Benz fitted a box body on the frame of his "Velo" car. The payload of the four-wheeled vehicle including the driver amounted to 300 kilograms. Its single-cylinder engine with a displacement of 1045 cm³ developed 2.75 hp. A year later, the "delivery vehicle" was already capable of carrying 300 kilograms plus two people thanks to its new 5 hp single-cylinder engine with a displacement of 2650 cm³.
In late 1897, Daimler countered by introducing his "business vehicle", a lightweight truck which would also be allocated to the category of vans today. In 1900 Benz launched what was a heavy-duty truck by the standards of the time – and not just one but a complete series. The top-of-the-range model had a payload capacity of five tonnes. It was powered by a two-cylinder horizontally-opposed piston engine with 14 hp.
Right from the start, Daimler and Benz engaged in international activities. As mentioned earlier, Daimler supplied the world's first truck to London. Two years later, Daimler presented a truck with a payload capacity of five tonnes at an exhibition in Paris, where Benz had sold one of his delivery vehicles as early as 1896. In 1900, Daimler displayed his business vehicle in New York and licence production was started in the United States, as two years earlier in Austria. In 1901, a Daimler truck emerged the winner in a competition against a steam-powered truck in Liverpool.
Trucks were delivered, among other countries, to Russia where they were also produced in St. Petersburg under licence for several years. Benz delivery vehicles were temporarily built in Birmingham in 1897 – a reaction to Daimler Motor Company in Coventry. In Germany, Benz produced as many as 100 delivery vehicles for England in 1902 alone.
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