In June 1986, the German federal government and the Road Haulage Association (BDF) hosted the 20th International Road Transport Union (IRU) World Congress in Frankfurt am Main. It was for this occasion that the BDF commissioned Andy Warhol to produce a series of screen prints depicting a freight truck. German art dealer Hermann Wünsche served as co-editor, having been one of the first gallery owners to bring Andy Warhol's work to Germany. In 1976 he had arranged for Warhol to do a portrait of Willy Brandt, Germany's first Social Democratic chancellor after the war, and went on to commission portraits of other notable Germans, such as the president of the Cancer Society, Mildred Scheel (1980), and the goalkeeper of the national football team, Toni Schumacher (1983).
The subject matter was very much in line with Warhol's practice of working with everyday objects and images, such as soup cans, detergent boxes, advertising posters, and iconic figures, real or imagined. The image of a cargo truck combined a certain everyday blandness with charisma and visual strength. After some experimentation with line and color, Warhol and the publishers produced a series of four prints in different color combinations, with backgrounds in yellow, blue, red and black. These were printed in an edition of sixty impressions, plus a small number of proofs, and 15 out-of-print impressions, respectively. The distribution was shared between Hermann Wünsche, the Federal Road Haulage Association and the International Road Transport Union. The set offered in September's Prints & Multiples auction comes from the archives of the Federal Road Haulage Association, today the Bundesverband Güterkraftverkehr Logistik und Entsorgung (BGL).
