In the first half of the 20th century delivery of coal to residential homes and companies was a big business. That’s because a majority of homes, apartments, and hotels heated with either coal or wood.
All that was to change with the introduction of oil furnaces and cheaper electricity starting in the 1920s. In Tacoma, the Aaberg Fuel Company owned a fleet of trucks used to deliver coal and wood.
In this 1949 photo featured in the December 14th issue of the Tacoma News Tribune, an Aaberg truck is being loaded with nut coal. A loader fitted with a scoop placed the coal into a hopper dropping the coal onto a conveyor belt where it was dumped in the truck’s box. Nut coal was size of lemons or small apples and primarily used in fireplaces, stoves, or ovens. Stoker coal was used in automated auger-fed furnaces.
Aaberg Fuel was originally known as the McKinley Coal Company. When the owner, Herbert Johnson, Jr. moved his sales yard from McKinley Avenue he decided to change the name. He first thought of using Johnson’s Fuel, but worried it would be too far down the alphabetical list, so chose another Scandinavian name he ran across – Aaberg.
The double-A spelling guaranteed his company a choice spot in the telephone listings. It was also catching and intriguing, so much that Aaberg still operates in Tacoma, these days as Aaberg Tool and Equipment Rentals. This photo #D46496-12 comes courtesy of the Tacoma Public Library.
