This Looks Like A Snail Kind Of, Right?: Cold Start

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Remember how I told you that last weekend I was at the North Carolina Transportation Museum as part of the Rad Carolina car show? I took the Pao, drew some car pictures for people, all that? Great. Well, while there, one of the vehicles that caught my eye was this funny little guy, which seems to be a Clark CK-26 or maybe a CK-30 airport tug. Or it may be an AT-26. I’m not really up on my airport tugs, sadly, But this one kind of reminds me of a snail. Maybe a slug? Something about the position of those lights on the nose there gives it a stalked-eye look I associate with those squishy, sodium-adverse fellas. But I am open to other suggestions.

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These airport tugs are always fascinating little machines, being so tiny and pulling such huge things, like, you know, airplanes. This one could be from anywhere from the 1940s to 1970s or so, has a four-cylinder engine in there, and I think these things weigh about 3,800 pounds or so, making them possibly the densest vehicles of any kind, ever.

Look how thick the steel is that forms the body! These things are built like minuscule tanks, which I guess they need to be for physics reasons of pulling things and all the abuse they likely take on the job. They look like what you’d get if you were told to build the concept of “plucky” as a vehicle.

Also, note the Piedmont Airlines livery there. I have a lot of memories associated with the now defunct (well, it was absorbed into USAir after 1989) airline because my dad almost always took Piedmont airlines to go on business trips when I was a kid. Those memories also make me think of something else now long-extinct: coin-operated TVs.

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I remember being kind of fascinated by these things, and the ones in our local airport I’m pretty sure were exactly like the ones seen above there, which, it turns out, you can rent from a prop house. I think I only convinced my mom to give me a quarter for it once, and while the process was exciting, the TV show itself was probably the last 12 minutes of a Three’s Company episode or maybe the local news or Wink Martindale hosting that game show with the Whammy. Because, never forget, TV used to be real garbage.

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Mercedes Streeter

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48 thoughts on “This Looks Like A Snail Kind Of, Right?: Cold Start”

  1. I have nothing to say other than when I used to play GTA, I’d love to steal airport tugs out of Los Santos and see how far I could bring them lol

  3. Our GM plant used a few of those to relocate machine tools. They would winch or crane lift the machine onto a steel plate skid and drag it across the wood floor.

  5. For me that little snail never pulled a plane…

    Now a long chain of luggage carriages and/or air fraight containers, most probably.

    It’s counsins/descendants/friends can be found on the tarmacs of almost any airport around the world ( there’s still a few places where the luggage carriage is hand pulled or where it’s a flatbed truck )

  6. Because, never forget, TV used to be real garbage.

    And yet, somehow a coin-op tv still sounds better than dealing with the dozen shitty streaming service apps that I now have to because my cable company stopped supporting cable cards and I refuse to pay for their shitty receiver and/or DVR.

    Streaming tv sounded great at first, but I’m increasingly unhappy with what it has done to the tv experience.

  7. I just flew on a Piedmont flight 2 weeks ago! Sure, the outside of the plane and my ticket said American Airlines, but the info card and the barf bag in the seat pocket said Piedmont.

      1. That’s not age, that’s corporate chicanery. American, like most major US airlines, operate their regional services as wholly-owned subsidiaries under fallen flags they own to squat on the trademarks and get around having to pay the aircrews what they pay their mainline crews.

  8. Some airports seems to be filled only with these kinds of weird vehicles: these snail guys, the wide, low turtle ones with what look like 40 inch tires (sometimes enclosed with the seats up front, sometimes open with the seat in the middle), the weird tractors pulling long chains of luggage wagons. Then there are the boring airports that use nothing but F-250s and Silverados with stuff stuck to it.

      1. I watched a guy drive a forklift backwards off a dock recently. It was about a five foot drop to the pavement below. Those counterweights are no joke.
        It was like watching cutting room floor footage of the old nose heavy General Lee attempt a very sad jump. (He’s ok just fired)

  13. Paint it pink, and you might be getting close to the sea slug from Paw Patrol. Although, the proportions on that are pretty close to that of their vehicles – time to introduce another pup whose thing is just hauling stuff, and come up with a bunch of absurd scenarios that involve hauling (Ryder! We made the world’s largest ice cream sandwich, but the sun reflecting off the Chickaletta statue is melting it and flooding the road with melted ice cream! We need someone to move the sandwich immediately!).

    https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/paw-patrol/images/3/33/Diving_bell_24.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20140919061109

    1. As someone who lived through it all I can say, yes so much garbage. Nostalgia creates love for a few shows but very few actually hold up if you go back and watch them. Tried to rewatch Knight Rider a while back. Every episode just followed a cookie cutter formula.

      Garbage.

      1. Cookie cutter indeed.
        I remember noticing, even at my then young age, that Starsky & Hutch had a given amount of fights, and always two car chases per episode.

        And they weren’t the worst show.

        CHIPS had two emergencies per episode too, be it a chase or saving someone on the road, or an accident – one in the beginning, one mid-way.

      3. I grew up on 80s TV too and still rewatch them regularly as background static while working. Knight Rider is good the first few seasons but really falls apart in the last season. Same story with A-Team, Airwolf, Dukes, Miami Vice, MacGyver, Greatest American Hero, etc. I think it was just the formulaic nature you mentioned above. Shows seen as a failure like Automan are actually a success by virtue of not lasting long enough to run out of ideas.

      4. Hardcastle & McCormick.
        A retiring judge and a former race car driver & convict team up with a VW kit car to go after people who got away with crimes due to technicalities of law.
        —I can’t believe I actually remembered that right. I only watched a few episodes because of the car. Really

    2. every era has schlock. that said, it’s good i was never allowed to pick the channel up to about 1983 (Cheers was the first show i was allowed to pick out for our family’s viewing). we probably wouldve watched too much Dukes, Charlies Angels, or BJ and the Bear.

      but i have fond memories of my dad’s shows (except Star Trek and I, Claudius): MTM, Barney Miller, All in the Family/, MASH, Odd Couple, random PBS/Masterpiece, Kojack, Columbo, and some detective show where the PI’s living room was also his garage).

      baby sitters, not so much: can’t forgive for Brady Bunch/Green Acres repeats over Looney Tunes repeats.

  17. Ah, snails. Reminds me of this rapid-fire exchange with my 4-year-old son, who is now grown and could go toe-to-toe with Jason in weird streams of consciousness. I had just tucked him into bed.

    Him: Dad, why are snails’ eyes way up high?

    Me: So they can see all around, I guess.

    Him: Because they have lots of enemies?

    Me: Yeah.

    Him: Like French people?

  19. my dad almost always took Piedmont airlines to go on business trips when I was a kid

    Mine, too! I hadn’t thought about Piedmont in a long time – thanks for the Friday memory jog. 🙂

    1. I flew Piedmont multiple times for business and connecting flight travel… Back in the days when air travel was downright boring with routine schedules and simple, reliable customer service and amenities. I don’t even want to set foot on a commercial flight if I can avoid it now.

    2. My first trip on an airplane was Piedmont. One thing that stuck out to me at the time: They had smokehouse almonds as the snack on the plan (not peanuts). Classy!

      1. “I foresee financial ruin in your future!” >:D

        And I think there’s plenty of garbage on all the streaming options available now. The medium shifted, but the trash is the same.

    3. I think Wink or Pat did time on that show as well. Carlton from Fresh Prince does the modern one on the game show network along with 21.

  21. I remember flying Eastern airlines as a kid and being fascinated by these tugs pulling baggage carts and even airliners. And those lights looked like such as afterthought, like “hey, you think they might ever fly AT NIGHT?”

    1. Funny thing. I flew on one of the very last or maybe last Eastern flights. Years later I was on what was reportedly the last TWA flight in the air. We were not told until we were underway. There was nothing, not even water offered in the galley and we could not use the washrooms as the tanks had not been emptied. Basically we were ballast as the plane was being returned to St. Louis to the creditors. I’m guessing they hypermiled in with the last of the fuel onboard too.

  22. Those coin-op TVs, man… I had almost forgotten about them. It blew my little kid mind seeing those. I guess that’s the real reason I miss being able to go to the gate to see people off at the airport, not the extra few minutes with friends and family, but the overpriced tiny TV experience.

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