Over the last two and a half years significant effort and dollars have been spent building the ICTA Checker library. To give you a sense of what it took to build, please consider that over ten thousand dollars was spent to build the website and load content into the library. Over 10,000 pages were scanned by hand to benefit all Checker fans.
All the funds and effort were donated without the expectation of payment by Checker fans. Most importantly the ICTA has made no claim of ownership of the legacy Checker content. All content is in the public domain. We only ask that if you share the documents, you tell people where it was sourced. It would be nice that our hard work was recognized.
We’re very thankful to Checker fans and family that donated content to load into the library. Donations have been made by a significant number of Checker fans: Ben Merkel, the Markin family and Jack Fritz Jr. just to name a few.
Perhaps the most significant donation of documents comes from John Logan, former Checker Motors Plant Superintendent. John first started at Checker in 1958, left during a strike period, then rejoined Checker in 1962 to stayed with Checker until retirement in 1998. John is actually responsible for the creation of the 1976 Checker 15 passenger Aerobus.
John has made three major contributions: Checker Production Reports 1966 thru 1980. Engineering Memoranda 1962 thru 1982 and Checker Illustration Manuals 1964 thru 1982. This donation has established our club as the foremost authority on Checker.
Production Reports: In the past visibility of Checker production data was limited to total production per model based on a serial number range, but now utilizing the production reports donated by Logan, we can drill down into Checker production.
For example, we can now determine that of the 5534 Checkers produced in 1969, 579 went to Chicago Yellow Cab and 460 went to Checker of Chicago. We can see that 104 Aerobuses were equipped with a bucket seat while 17 had dual bucket seats. We can even see breakdowns of trim, 67 A11’s were equipped with the optional “Checker” nameplate.
The club now has access to all these reports. All production reports have been loaded to Facebook and will soon be loaded to the web archive.
Engineering Memoranda: The Checker A11 and A12 were introduced for 1962. John Logan has donated a complete set of engineering memos that documents every change on these two models produced from the beginning in 1962 thru end of production in 1982!
We can now see how and when every change took place. We can also see the names of those responsible for the change: whether it was from Jim Stout, who started at Checker in 1922, Sab Hori who started in 1947 or Steve Wilson who started in 1955 all the key leadership has touched the memos!
Changes can be as simple as adding a reflector to a taillight door, to the introduction of a new model, like the Super Cab of 1964. How many times has a question been raised regarding the first use of Chevrolet 350 engine? We can now present the facts: dates, models, and chassis numbers impacted. The entre collection represents 484 memos. To date about 315 (1962 – 1971) have been scanned and will be add to the web site shortly.
Checker Illustration Manuals: The Logan donation included volumes of Checker illustration, 1964 – 1982. The manual are big and thick. Each manual presents illustrations and parts breakdown for every Checker sub-assembly. CMC Parts Manuals are always a good source for illustrations, but these documents illustrate everything and each illustration includes a part bill of materials. In all John has provided fourteen 3 inch thick loose leaf binders, that’s a lot of paper.
To put this in perspective, over the last year, over ten thousand pages of paper Checker documents have been loaded into the library. All can be downloaded at the push of a button.
So how do you gain access to the archive? You go to WWW.ICTA.club. At the top of the home page there is a tab for “Archive”. All you need to do is click on the “Archive” tab/pull down, you can choose from four options that cover generations (1922-1959) and decades (1960-1969), (1970-1979) and 1980-1989).
Once you have chosen a generation or decade, you’ll see Checker models in the generation section or Checker years in the decade section.
To demonstrate, here are some screen shot that display how to get to specific documents. We’ll take a look at the year 1973. The first thing you’ll need to do, is to go to the 70’s decade page, there you will see all years for the decade. Scroll down to
Once you have scrolled down to 1973, you’ll see a picture of a Checker and a menu of available documents. If you move your curser over the menu it the tabs will change color to orange and a list of available documents will displayed.
In our example we’ll will present a Checker Illustration. Once the tab is orange and the document can be chosen. We’ll pick the Steering 370 document. With your curser, just click on the document line.
Once the document has been chosen, the actual document will pop up on your screen. Now here’s the best part, you can now print or download the document. Notice in the above depiction, the red oval. It covers a little down arrow that allows for downloading the 19 page document and a little printer icon that allow for printing. The document is one click away.
So there you have it, now go out and download every Checker document possible. At this time we have loaded about 90% of documents donated by John Logan. We have scanned 100% of the Logan donation. We have loaded all documents donated by Ben Mekel. The Markin donation will be a challenged, the nuisance suit prosecuted again us this year wiped out all funds slated to convert blueprints to a PDF format, it may be some time before the full Markin donation can be scanned.
Again thanks to all who have contributed content.
