This interesting ad appeared in Boys’ Life magazine eighty years ago this month, June 1943. It encouraged boys and girls to do their part toward the war effort by making themselves and their bicycles available to local retailers for deliveries, since they were “finding difficulty in getting grown men for delivery work.”

For kids who already had a bike, they could start offering their services.  But if they didn’t have one, they could “go to their nearest Roadmaster Bicycle (Cleveland Welding Company) dealer and ask him to help you fill out an application to get a bicycle.”

The application was necessary because bicycles, like many wartime commodities were being rationed, and were available only to those in critical occupations.  Specifically, they were not being made as children’s toys.  But if the kids were willing to be the last mile of the wartime supply chain, then presumably they qualified.

The wartime models were bare bones, without many features.  So the ad encouraged kids to  invest their earnings in war bonds, and buy a post-war model as soon as they became available.