Tulsa, Oklahoma is known for its museums, riverside views, and tours of historical sites. Oh, and a U-Haul truck that’s been sitting atop a building for 46 years.
In the 1970s, U-Haul was putting trailers on top of buildings throughout the country, as part of its advertising campaign. But in 1978, U-Haul placed an actual truck on the roof of a building in Tulsa and it’s been there ever since. According to the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, this was the first instance of a U-Haul truck being placed on a building, rather than a trailer. There’s another truck of similar vintage that resides on a building in Oklahoma City, but it seems Tulsa’s was first. The building is located at 504 E Archer Street and was constructed for the National Supply Company in 1930, already making it a local landmark of sorts. But for the last half-century, it’s been known for having a box truck on its roof.
To keep it looking spiffy, in 2011 the truck was given a clean and wrapped in a more modern orange-and-white U-Haul livery. It’s even fitted with spotlights, so locals can marvel at its magnificence at all hours of the night. That might seem silly—it did to me at first—but commenters on the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture’s Facebook post seem nostalgic about seeing the truck all lit up.
I’m more impressed that the roof has managed to hold the truck over so many decades. Flat commercial roofs aren’t typically built to support concentrated loads in small areas; the concern is more about broad loads, like accumulated snow. I’m not sure how much a box truck weighed in 1978, but a modern 15-foot U-Haul has an empty weight of 8,115 pounds. So the roof may have required quite a bit of reinforcement to handle that much weight for almost 50 years without sagging or breaking. And hopefully, it lasts many more years, lighting the night sky like a creamsicle-colored Bat Signal.
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