In the mid-1930s, the automotive industry of the Soviet Union was only in its infancy, but the mechanization of the economy was already seen as a crucial task for the country's industrialization. Despite limited production capacity, trucks and specialized vehicles began to be actively introduced into industry, construction, and agriculture.
The publication "Special Automobiles," released in 1935, described in detail the transport used in enterprises and construction sites of the Union. According to the book, special automobiles were understood as vehicles for narrow purposes—for transporting specific categories of goods: bulk materials, livestock, food, or furniture. The simplest were considered vans for delivering bread: their bodies housed shelves for boxes of loaves, and if necessary, the body could be converted to transport furniture or clothing that required protection from dust and moisture.
Special attention was paid to the design. Mechanisms and devices that determined the purpose of the vehicle could be located both on the chassis and inside the body, although standard cargo platforms with non-standard superstructures were more commonly used. The authors emphasized that the development of the country's economy required the mass introduction of such machines and that the scale of special equipment application in the USSR should eventually surpass Western indicators. However, in the mid-1930s, the industry still lagged behind foreign countries, so the main emphasis was on the production of ordinary trucks needed for the transport needs of the national economy.
Nevertheless, the first examples of unique machines were already appearing in the country. In 1933, the Scientific Automobile Transport Institute created the first Soviet all-terrain vehicle, which successfully passed the tests. A year later, a dump truck was built at the Yaroslavl Automobile Plant, which was undergoing comprehensive tests at the time of the book's publication. In addition, there was also a small-scale production of highly specialized vehicles—often based on serial chassis. This, according to the authors, clearly demonstrated the growing need of industry and agriculture for specialized equipment.
The book noted that solving the problem required new factories for the production of special vehicles and the creation of separate workshops at existing enterprises. One of the most demanded areas then was dump trucks. They were equipped with tilting bodies and various types of lifting mechanisms. Depending on the design, the body could be tilted back, to the side, or to both sides. Some models had two bodies—the main and the side, which made them especially convenient for unloading. Semi-trailers with a conveyor bottom, allowing unloading without tilting, were mentioned separately.
All-terrain vehicles were also of great interest. These machines were necessary for the development of hard-to-reach areas, especially in logging areas, in the north, and in the desert regions of Central Asia. During that period, even special devices were used to turn an ordinary truck into a tracked vehicle. The design of such kits, borrowed from India, involved the installation of two track belts on the sides of the vehicle. They were connected to pairs of idler wheels mounted on channel beams. Under normal conditions, the wheels did not touch the ground, but when driving on viscous or sandy soil, they could be lowered using a lever.
When the mechanism was activated, the intermediate discs were pressed against the drive wheels and track belts, ensuring uniform rotation without slipping. This solution significantly reduced the pressure on the surface and improved the vehicle's cross-country ability. Converting the machine from normal mode to tracked mode took no more than one minute.
Despite the fact that in 1935 the Soviet automotive industry was only beginning its path to large-scale motorization, the ideas laid down then became the basis for the further development of special equipment. Several decades later, the USSR was indeed able to create its own school of automotive engineering, including in the field of heavy trucks, dump trucks, and all-terrain vehicles, which became an integral part of the country's industrial progress.