Historical milk truck with South Sound ties sold to LeMay family at auction

By Alexis Krell

Johnny Pierce stands next to his 1941 International K3 panel delivery truck at Marymount Event Center on Friday. The truck sold for $2,000 at the annual LeMay Car Show, Auction and Swap Meet.

Johnny Pierce said goodbye to a 1941 milk truck with South Sound ties that he sold Sunday, but he said he’s not done researching the vehicle’s history.

The International K-3 experimental milk truck sold for $2,000 at the annual LeMay Car Show, Auction and Swap Meet in Tacoma. It was Doug LeMay himself who bought the vehicle to display, Pierce said.

“At least it’s going to go someplace where people can see it,” Pierce said. “I personally gave him all the information I had on it. I was going over it with him and stuff, and he thought that was really cool.”

Pierce wasn’t sure whether the truck would eventually go to the LeMay-America’s Car Museum downtown, but said it would at least be displayed at the LeMay Family Collection at Marymount in Parkland.

Doug LeMay wasn’t immediately reachable for comment.

Pierce owned the truck for 23 years, and during that time extensively researched its past as a privately owned vehicle for Fort Lewis Dairy Co.

The business was started by the Munn family of Thurston County, who settled in the region in the early 1900s, delivering milk, ice cream and ice in the area. The truck Pierce sold was one of three the dairy received in 1941.

A daughter of one of the company’s presidents sought Pierce out at the auction, he said, and she has plans to share her own history of the dairy with him. Whatever he learns, he says he’ll pass along to LeMay.

“I’ll go down there and talk to them,” Pierce said. “The research on the truck still isn’t over.”