One can’t recount the early days of Ghana’s automotive industry without mentioning the legendary mammy trucks and the important role they served in our communities.
Before luxury cars and air-conditioned buses hit our roads, it was the Mammy truck that powered transportation. Rural dwellers used them to bring their dreams to life, as they used them to make their way into the growing cities.
Mammy trucks were hybrid vehicles, combining imported chassis and local wooden bodies. This fostered economic mobility and demonstrated Ghana’s community-based transportation culture.
Mammy truck
As I sat with 63-year-old Mr. Mensah-Fio under a shed on a cold Friday afternoon, he recounted his experiences during the era when he was only a young boy, working with his uncle, a truck driver. For people like him and his uncle, Mammy trucks were more than vehicles. They were means of survival.
“I was about 15,” he recalled. “My uncle brought the truck home. It was tall and very noisy.”
The trucks were named Mammy trucks due to the significant role they played in serving market women and the women’s dependence on them. According to Mr. Mensah-Fio, these trucks were literally the links between rural communities and urban markets. Everyone, including farmers, traders, and market women (the “mammies”), relied on them to carry produce, such as cassava and plantain, from farming communities to Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi, and other urban centers. “Without those trucks, the villages wouldn’t have survived. My uncle and others who owned these trucks gave people hope.”
According to Mr. Mensah-Fio, friendships and other deeper bonds were formed in these trucks. People shared food, stories, and jokes as they journeyed together inside the wooden trucks.
Inscriptions
Mammy trucks with inscriptions
One striking feature of these trucks was the slogans and artwork painted on them. Mr. Mensah-Fio’s uncle’s truck proudly had the inscription “Small boy wonder.” Other trucks had inscriptions such as “God’s time is the best” and “Stay in your lane,” among others, written on them. These inscriptions, some humorous, reflected belief, culture, and lifestyle.
Life on the road
The roads were not friendly, and during the rainy season, mud trapped trucks, leading to constant breakdowns. “My uncle carried tools always,” Mr. Mensah-Fio recalled. “Sometimes he returned home past midnight from repairing the truck in the forest.”
Mammy truck station
The imported chassis fitted with locally crafted wooden bodies enabled the mammy trucks to endure Ghana’s rough terrain. Despite this, he mentioned that passengers could get wet in the trucks, as they were made of wood.
The demise of mammy trucks
By the late 1960s to 1980s, the government began to ban wooden-bodied vehicles due to safety concerns. Mammy trucks sometimes carried as many as 50 or more people despite a 45-person limit, making it risky.
In their place, Trotros and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter buses emerged. These were more comfortable, faster, and more acceptable under safety regulations. And eventually, mammy trucks faded.
Mr. Mensah-Fio claimed that people now get to markets faster. But the soul of mammy trucks was lost. People missed the jokes and other shared moments in these trucks.
Today, mammy trucks are nearly extinct. They have been replaced by taxis, minibuses, and formalized commercial vehicles. These trucks symbolized community; a stark difference from modern times, when everyone riding public transport is on their phones or minding their own business until they reach their destination.
“Young ones should remember, these trucks carried Ghana before Uber, before modern buses. They carried farmers, market women, culture on their backs. And after all these years, we, the older ones, will eulogize these trucks for how much they brought to our roads,” Mr. Mensah-Fio said.
