Classic Motor cars

All these vehicle manufacturers, however, saw the handwriting on the wall: the automobile would drive out the horse. One of the first to recognize this was James H. Whiting, president of the Flint Wagon Works, whose plant, extensive for those days, covered part of the present Chevrolet site in West Flint. Mr. Whiting was a cautious man in most respects, but, foreseeing the eventual throttling of the carriage trade, he acted with what must now be reckoned a quite remarkable boldness. He began to look about for a car which might become the basis for an industry which would use part of his plant.

Thus far Flint had had no luck whatever with automobiles in a commercial sense. Two of its more enterprising citizens, Judge Charles Wisner and Dr. H. H. Bardwell, had built experimental cars for themselves, but neither of these gentlemen ever let business interfere with science, and their cumbersome vehicles merely amused a populace which thought in terms of wheels and hoped against hope for practical results. It looked to many as if young Alexander B. C. Hardy, who will appear in this tale later, had “hit it” with the dashing Flint roadster, all red paint and shining brass, which he had begun to make in a little factory down by the Grand Trunk tracks, a factory once devoted to the manufacture of the now almost extinct whip-socket. Mr. Hardy had been nerved to this great adventure by a visit to the Paris Exposition, where he saw how far French cars were ahead of American cars. Returning home he mustered a small capital and soon had a smart roadster ready for the market. In the end, however, Hardy was forced to liquidate, largely through the opposition he encountered from the owners of the Selden patent. While he was operating, a frequent visitor at his shop was James H. Whiting, and undeterred by the young man’s lack of success, Whiting kept looking longingly for an automobile to manufacture.

All through the history of American automobile manufacturing in its early stages, will be seen shining examples of the courage of ignorance. Here was James H. Whiting already well along in years, with no engineering experience and no clear conception of the problems involved in making, selling, and marketing automobiles. He thought that cars could be sold by the same salesmen who went out to sell buggies, road carts, and farm wagons. As for manufacturing, he would buy what was necessary, put it together, paint and upholster the job which was practically the procedure in carriage manufacturing. Other concerns no better equipped than the Flint Wagon Works were building cars in just that way, so why shouldn’t the Wagon Works? In due course, carnage firms discovered that building and selling motor cars was an entirely different business from making and selling carriages. The automobile business required far more capital and called for standards of mechanical precision beyond anything required in the carriage tracfe, but all that remained to be learned. By the time Frank Briscoe wanted to unload the Buick, James H. Whiting was in a frame of mind to consider negotiating for it. Brought together by Mr. Stone, Whiting and Briscoe quickly made a deal whereby the Buick concern sent its car over the roads to Flint. These roads were so bad that, in order to negotiate the 65 miles between Detroit and Flint, Buick and Marr, who drove the car, had to cover 115 miles, with every mile a test. Machinery, patterns, and dies were brought to Flint and housed in a small, one-story building adjoining the Wagon Works. The two concerns then formed the Buick Motor Company.

To bind the bargain quickly, $10,000 was borrowed from Flint banks on the endorsement of a number of prominent citizens. Though of small proportion, this deal was a striking example of community morale in a small town. Larger banks and endorsers elsewhere would have been more cautious, but Flint took the game with a rugged confidence.

Benjamin Briscoe, Jr., will be remembered as one of the colorful and energetic figures in the early days of the industry, and the daring promoter of the United States Motor Company. This company was put forward as an automobile merger planned to become the chief rival of General Motors. When United States Motor Company collapsed, Mr. Briscoe must have regretted his sale of Buick for a song, since the Buick in the meantime had become the key-stone of General Motors.

The original capitalization of $75,000 in Buick was financed by the Flint Wagon Works’ declaring a dividend of $75,000 which was paid into the treasury of the Buick Motor Company, which in return issued stock to the Flint Wagon Works stockholders and also’ to the Buick interest. David D. Buick and his son Thomas received 1,500 shares between them. The other large stockholders were James H. Whiting with 1,505 shares, Charles M. Begole with 1,000 shares, George L. Walker, 725 shares, William S. Ballenger with 707 shares. Mr. Begole and Mr. Ballenger were active in the Flint Wagon Works and later in Chevrolet.

Buick now had a home and business management whose caution would be likely to restrain the optimism of David D. Buick himself. The skeleton of an organization was put together. A three-story brick building was begun, which at first housed all of the company’s activities, but later was used only for motor and transmission manufacture. Old Buick No. 1 – sometime later called No. 2 – still has a sentimental attraction for now aging employees who began their careers there. Greatly enlarged, the building has become part of the Chevrolet motor plant. Sixteen cars were built in 1903, 37 in 1904, priced at $1,200. These first Buicks were equipped with a storm front curtain, with a large celluloid window in it, to protect the driver.

The $37,500 set aside for development had been exhausted, and loans had been made to carry on the work. Mr. Whiting felt that a younger man was needed to master this new business, with its insatiable appetite for capital and its crying need for quick decision. By this time he perceived clearly that the Buicks, father and son, were neither of them business men and that their chief associates were likewise more interested in mechanics than in profits. The need of the moment was for a man full of energy and vision who also possessed a keen sense of market possibilities and the courage to think in large figures.

At a meeting of carriage manufacturers in Chicago, in 1904, Mr. Whiting told F. A. Aldrich, representing the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, of the difficulties he faced getting the Buick Motor Company swinging market-wise. Mr. Aldrich advised him that the man he should interest, the one man who fitted the specifications and was immediately available, was William Crapo Durant. “Billy” Durant was already a leader among his associates and in the opinion of Flint. Born in Boston, December 8, 1861, he was the grandson of one of Michigan’s war governors, Henry H. Crapo, who had brought to Flint part of the capital amassed by his thrifty ancestors in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they had followed the sea as mariners and shipbuilders to good purpose for some generations. Originally of French stock, the Crapos of New Bedford and Flint alike were rich, prosperous, and able.

From boyhood ”Billy” Durant’s chief interest was business. He might have gone East to college, but instead went to work early in his grandfather’s lumber business, one of the largest of the many large lumber mills in Flint. Then, to get more action, he branched out before the age of twenty-one into insurance with an agency of his own. That suited him, because insurance was something you could go out and sell. No waiting around for customers to come to you, as in. the store. An almost feverish activity possessed him. “Billy” Durant above everything needed action. While possessed of a notable faculty for remaining calm in the midst of alarms, he seemed to require dramatic tension in business. Yet he had also the power of concentrating intently on work.

All this both Mr. Whiting and Mr. Aldrich knew, for W. C. Durant at forty-two was already the most talked of man in Flint. As they discussed his availability for the automobile business, they recalled the dramatic entry Mr. Durant had made into the vehicle field some fifteen years before, when he had pioneered the road-cart business which provided Flint with its initiation into quantity production and salesmanship. The young insurance hustler had bought, while in Coldwater, Michigan, for $50 the patent rights for a road cart which carried a good selling point in its improved suspension. He took into parthership Josiah Dallas Dort, a young hardware clerk, and the new firm contracted with W. A. Paterson for 10,000 carts at $8 each.

This was an unheard-of quantity, calling upon the manufacturer to adjust his plant and workers to a new system of assembly for such a large operation. But “Billy” went out and made sales rapidly at $12.50. The success of this flyer in road carts induced other manufacturers to follow in that field and to bring to it and other fields large-scale repeat operations. Durant and Dort used their earnings to finance the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, which swiftly advanced to a position of acknowledged leadership in the trade with an annual production of 50,000 “Blue Ribbon” vehicles, high earnings, and a strong cash position, which, as we shall see, has its bearing on the story of the Buick and General Motors. His success in the carriage business made Mr. Durant a millionaire before his fortieth year, placing him in a position where an average man might have been satisfied with both his fortune and his prestige. But W. C. Durant was no average man; when the carriage business settled down into stodgy matter-of-facthess, he looked for other fields to conquer.

Thus far his natural bent toward commercial adventure had found expression in the sharp competitive building and selling of styled carriages, a trade wide open to the risks of fashion. If the popular note could be struck with a buggy, if its lines attracted rural swains or a town’s social leaders, the manufacturer drove a thriving trade. By the turn of the century the fun was out of the carriage business. Mr. Durant went to New York City and was studying Wall Street and the Stock Exchange at close range about the time that Mr. Whiting was beginning to think that the Buick Motor Company needed a new management.

Mr. Durant came back to Flint the next summer to see just what there was to this Buick car which the Flint Wagon Works and James Whiting had brought to Flint. With no technical experience of his own to guide him, Mr. Durant applied the only test he could make, but he did so with a thoroughness which to this day is recalled in Michigan. He drove that two-cylinder Buick back and forth over a wide range of territory devoid of good roads save for a few gravel turnpikes built by toll companies. He put it through swamps, mud and sand, and pitch-holes for almost two months, bringing it in for repairs and consultations and then taking it out again for another strenuous cross-country run.

He had every sort of mischance chronic in the motoring of the period, often, of course, being stalled in out-of-the-way hamlets for lack of repair parts or fuel and oil. During these enforced waits, perhaps in a country blacksmith shop which some day would be a garage, this impetuous and eager mind wrestled with the future of transportation.

The central idea of the motor car must have appealed to his temperament, for it emphasized qualities and powers like some of his own: speed, novelty, flexibility, the ability to “get there». Its possibilities for salesmanship and show-manship would also appeal to one who had proved himself already a most successful distributor of vehicles. The motor car, he could see, fitted the progressive American spirit like a glove. In addition, here was a piece of merchandise that could not be hid; the motor car would advertise itself on the street and at the curb. Probably Mr. Durant concluded early in these tests that if Buick was not the medium by which he would enter the automobile trade, he would get into that business in another way before long. But after the car had met his severe tests, Mr. Durant looked no further: Buick would do.

By November 1, 1904, the deal between Buick Motor Company and W. C. Durant was complete; on that day the capital was increased from $75,000 to $300,000, represented by 3,000 shares of $100 each. Holders of the old stock agreed to accept Preferred stock paying 7 percent with a 25 percent bonus of Common stock. The contract covering this agreement was drawn by John J. Carton of Flint, for many years attorney for the Buick Motor Company. The Wagon Works stockholders agreed to accept Preferred stock for their holdings. It was agreed that later Buick capitalization should be increased to $500,000 and that the Wagon Works’ interest should receive $175,000. This was done. On September11, 1905, Buick’s stock was increased to $1,500,000 – $900,000 Common and $600,000 Preferred. Mr. Carton relates that while the Buick business was sound and there was a legitimate need for this large capitalization, he had some difficulty finding enough assets to justify the increase.

Mr. Durant himself sold most of the stock. It is related that at the outset he sold $500,000 worth in a single day to his Flint neighbors. There can be no doubt that Mr. Durant was a most persuasive salesman. An aura of success hung around him. For more than twenty years all his undertakings had profited; early in his selling campaign he had indisputable proof that Buick was making money. Production was steadily increasing, and he could sell every car he produced for cash, F.O.B. factory. So keen was the demand that his problem was not so much selling cars as finding capital with which to erect buildings, install machinery, and create a distributing organization so that more cars could be built and delivered. However loyally Flint might buy stock, it was too small a city to finance the expanding enterprise; Mr. Durant had to go out into the highways and byways of Michigan for capital. In this search he was tireless. He saw an immense fortune, tremendous power, and a lofty reputation as an industrial pioneer almost in his grasp if he could only find the necessary capital.

Of course, it goes without saying that, in representing the golden prospects of his venture to investors, faith and sincerity accounted for his extraordinary success in getting promotion money from individuals. He would have been saved a tremendous amount of time and energy if he had been able to secure the services of a strong investment banking house to dispose of his securities ystematically, but this was out of the question in that time and locality. Local bankers helped him all they could, and his persuasive personality drew temporary aid from larger banks outside of Flint, but what he needed was a large fixed capital invested for a long pull, and this he could secure only through further personal effort.

Meantime, as the builder and leader of Buick, he found a host of problems other than financial demanding solution. Since it was early apparent that Buick’s facilities in the western end of Flint would be inadequate, offices and assembly operations were transferred to a factory in Jackson which had been used by the Imperial Wheel Company. Imperial Wheel was part of the Durant-Dort family, as were the Flint Varnish Works and the Flint Axle Works. The three companies had already been located in the north end of Flint, where, with a view to future expansion of these and other companies, Mr. Durant had purchased the 22O-acre Hamilton farm for $22,000. Thus he had in hand an excellent site for the expansion of Buick itself with adequate trackage on the Pere Marquette railroad, and good location as respects drainage, water supply, and general accessibility. He planned to sell part of this area as building lots, laying out for that purpose Oak Park Subdivision. But of course an immense amount of organizing work had to be done on the tract and its approaches, as well as in plant construction, before Buicks could be produced there. In the meantime the Jackson plant held the fort while Buick motors continued to be made in West Flint. Jackson, indeed, might have continued as the chief seat of Buick if capital could have been found there as easily as in Flint.

This geographic division of the business increased the labors of the leader. We can picture Mr. Durant at this time as a man desperately hurried, spurred by ambition and responsibility to feats of almost superhuman endurance, driving at breakneck speed over wretched roads between his two plants, holding conferences, making quick decisions, seeking out and encouraging new dealers, scouring the country for supplies and building plants, subduing raw land to industrial and residential uses and feverishly seeking new capital. This spare, small man seemed to draw upon irresistible sources of energy. He worked more hours than any of his employees, did with little sleep, yet came to his labors fresh and smiling every morning. There was a gaiety and resilience in him which overcame all obstacles. The press began to speak of him as the “Little Giant”. His worshipful associates might call him “Billy”, but among themselves they fell into the habit of calling him “the Man”. “The Man says”, was the common preface as they passed his orders along from one to the other. Sometimes “He says” would be a sufficient indication of authority. Both forms were proof of the loyal and willing acceptance of that authority. He was the first among equals rather than the autocrat, and no captain has ever been followed by more devoted troops. The camp followers, the local public, and the business men alike hung on his words.

One factor in developing this amazing and truly affectionate loyalty was his lack of concern for individual gain, the natural ease and buoyancy with which he played the prince in distributing bounties. There are innumerable evidences that he cared little for money for its own sake. His own tastes were simple, he had no time to spend money; already well off, he had serene confidence that he would always be successful and that nothing could stop him from amassing an immense fortune in the automobile game. I use the word “game” advisedly: if he was not the man who invented that adventurous expression to describe the early activities of what has since become a most precise and responsible business, he at least played that great game most completely as an adventure of the human spirit.

As an example of his lavish disregard of personal gain and his willingness to share profits with those whose backing had braced him in the past, Mr. Durant is said to have turned in to the Durant-Dort treasury at one time some $300,000 worth of Buick stock, voted to him personally in return for his work in promoting the company. In completing his layout for the approaches to the Buick industrial site, he paid $4,000 for land offered at $1,800 simply because he knew that this land as part of his grand objective was worth that much and more. The instances of his largesse could be multiplied indefinitely. He explained his generosity toward Durant-Dort stockholders by saying that he had been on the Durant-Dort pay roll during the period in which he was organizing Buick, though the fact is that he was drawing a merely nominal sum from his old company.
Of course, the essential fact is that he enjoyed doing these things, and the power to do them was his compensation.

With a swift expansion program in hand and no banking connections equal to the situation, there were times when the good-will built up so generously brought important returns in timely assistance. Mr. F. A. Aldrich, secretary of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company for many years, shows from his records that Durant-Dort furnished Buick with capital in its early stages.

The Flint Wagon Works also helped Buick get on its feet. Five of its directors loaned the Buick Motor Company at one time $20,000 each to match an equal sum loaned to Buick at the same time by the Durant-Dort Carriage Company. Thus in one way or another, with occasional rescue loans and a vigorous search outside of Flint for capital, Buick expansion was financed.

Even when allowances are made for the newness of the automobile business and the suspicion in which it was held by the banking world in general in those early days, it does not appear that Mr. Durant ever quite deserved the reputation for financial genius which at one time clung to his name. Certainly, in the formative years, finance was his weak side. While he could make money in his operations, and raise a good deal of money by his personal force and the confidence which he inspired, he never seemed able to budget his operations accurately in advance and build up reserves. His vision was always running far ahead of his treasury, so that there was always the possibility that his affairs would approach the ragged edge of necessity if a turn came with an unfavorable market for his goods, or the well-springs of capital suddenly ran dry. His inventories and commitments were usually in excess of his present power to pay, but he had an immense faith that by the time he had to pay for them he would find the money somewhere. Either the market would provide it or stock would be sold; in a pinch he could go to friendly corporations or individuals. He kept the golden ball in the air by sheer dexterity and courage through six straining years of exceedingly rapid expansion. Looking backward upon the activities of a quarter of a century ago it can be seen that the notable human qualities behind this triumph also had their defects, which eventually caused Mr. Durant’s retirement from the vast business which he originated. But it can also be appreciated that his qualities were precisely those needed to get a foundation laid with whatever tools and materials were ready at hand. Probably no other man could have built up Buick in four years to a point where, as an acknowledged leader in the industry, Buick became the rock on which General Motors was founded.

Courage is the key-word for this Buick surge to market leadership. Buick dared to produce in large quantities when most of its competitors were proceeding cautiously on restricted schedules. It pioneered in the development of attractive retail stores in large centers, and drew able, ambitious men into both wholesale and retail selling. There, perhaps, was Mr. Durant’s greatest contribution to the technique of automobile administration.

For a man so vastly daring it was inevitable that as Buick production rose, further expansion should seem not only desirable but indeed necessary. Vital supplies had to be safeguarded both as to volume and prompt delivery. Competition was then less of a wrestle for markets and more of a race against time. The public would take Buicks as fast as they could be turned out; delay in delivery of even a minor part might cost a tremendous sum. Even to this day, no automobile manufacturer controls the production chain of all supplies from their primary forms to their incorporation in a completed automobile ready for the road; yet in this industry utter dependence on certain forms of goods was so essential that practically all the survivors in the stern battle for existence waged during the past thirty years are those who have been working toward self-determination, seeking positions where their operations could not be shut off by shrinkage of those essential supplies.

For instance, consider engines. In the early days of the industry many automobile manufacturers bought all or part of their power units. While these units may have been entirely satisfactory in price and quality, nevertheless, the automobile manufacturer soon realized that his production schedule was at the mercy of circumstances beyond his control. A stoppage in his supplier’s plant, arising from any one of a number of causes, tied up his own plant. This risk being too heavy, the tendency has been for car manufacturers to take over engine manufacture. Some have gone a considerable distance toward controlling supplies from raw materials to the finished product, yet no manufacturer has been able as yet to process all the materials used in automobiles, because of the wide range of those materials and the special skill and large capital required to bring them into economic use. The drift has been toward self-sufficiency, yet complete self-sufficiency has not been attained and probably never will be. But in this evolution nearly all those manufacturers who depended altogether on assembling the products of other enterprises have either perished or have been absorbed. The survivors are those firms which accepted the responsibility of making for themselves goods which others would have been glad to make for them, but which for various substantial reasons it seemed vital to control throughout the entire process of production and assembly. Mr. Durant realized the value of broad organization before he entered the automobile field. The Durant-Dort Carriage Company had gone further than any of its competitors in organizing subsidiary, or at least dependent, companies. It had fathered companies for the production of wheels, paint, varnish, and axles; through others it owned in whole or in part extensive timber holdings in distant states. It was natural that, faced with the market possibilities of the automobile and the difficulty of securing supplies of the right sort as required in his hot haste for action, Mr. Durant should leap to the conclusion that he needed bmader organization than Buick, big enough to include not only other motor-car producers but also makers of essential parts.

The need to control supplies was keenly felt in 1907, when Buick, which had concentrated successfully on two-cylinder cars, added four-cylinder models to the line. In 1908 diversification was carried even further, with two two-cylinder models, and four four-cylinder models. One of the latter the famous Model Ten started Buick on the heaviest production it had yet known, and its success was no doubt one of the elements encouraging W. C. Durant to envision a General Motors. Frederic L. Smith’s reminiscences Motoring Down a Quarter of a Century indicate that his first talks were with Mr. Smith at Lansing, and that the very name, General Motors, was thus early discussed.

Flint meantime was booming as Buick drew labor from all directions. Responding to the pull of high wages, men hurried there from all quarters of the compass, from other industrial cities, from the farms of southern Michigan and the forest areas further north. Tool makers came from Providence and Hartford. The population of the city doubled in five years. House-building could not keep pace
with the flood of arrivals. While Buick factory No. 10, then the largest industrial building in the world, was under construction, the neighborhood resembled a mining camp. Living quarters were at a premium; the same bed would be rented to a night-worker by day and a day-worker by night. Shacks, hastily thrown together to provide some sort of shelter, housed families who were having their first taste of prosperity. Farms were subdivided right and left, townspeople built houses as fast as they could, spurred by rising values as well as by public spirit. One could see all the evidences of rapid municipal growth, the difficulties of absorbing a large, new population swiftly into an old one. Persons of foreign blood congregated in colonies Polish, Hungarian, Serbian.

What one could not see as readily, unless he knew the Buick shops, was the terrific task which faced the Buick organization in molding this medley of raw and transient labor into an efficient working force, its members well disposed toward one another and toward management. Flint was an open-shop town, and that tradition, bolstered by high wages and the opportunities for advancement offered by a new industry, held firm against the few and withal rather weak efforts to unionize the plants. A dynamic and dramatic leadership helped to maintain that tradition until employee morale could be built up to a quite remarkable peak, until men began to see that Buick, springing from the soil of the Hamilton farm, would be an enduring institution in whose plants they could find steady and profitable employment during normal times and which in fact proved for
years more resistant to business depression than the average manufacturing plant.
Buick in 1908 manufactured 8,487 cars, occupied the largest automobile plant in the world, and had a net worth of $3,417,142. It had never missed a dividend on its Preferred stock.

General Motors, immediately after its organization in September, 1908, took over Buick Motor Company for $1,500 cash, Common stock of $1,249,250, and Preferred stock of $2,499,500 a total of $3,750,250, a conservative valuation to which Buick had grown from $75,000 within the remarkably short space of four years.

Although its manufacturing processes would be considered haphazard and inefficient in the light of modern technology, they were abreast of the best practice of the day. Buick possessed a spirit in its personnel and a reputation with the public which made it a tower of strength from which its bold organizer, after surveying wider fields, could advance toward his great objective the formation of the General Motors Company.

Commercial Vehicles

Mention has been made of the steam “drags” built in England and France from 1821 on, some of which were used alternately in towing both goods and passengers in trailers. In America, the first power road vehicle especially designed for goods transport was a huge steam traction engine begun in New York City in 1858, shipped West, and assembled there to haul goods from the Missouri River to Colorado. It broke down on its first trip seven miles after starting, the spot being marked by a monument at Nebraska City, Nebraska.

Better luck attended the self-propelled “steamers” built for fire-fighting purposes by the Amoskeag Mills at Manchester, New Hampshire, one of which was bought by the City of Boston after it had been rushed there to help fight the great fire of 1872. Hartford, Connecticut, bought a steam fire fighter, the Jumbo, in 1876. Many other less successful attempts to develop self-propelled fire-fighters are on record, one having been built by the famous Captain Ericsson as early as 1840.

Gasoline delivery wagons began to appear shortly after the light gasoline cars proved their superiority over steam and electric vehicles in the Chicago race of 1895. The Langert Company of Philadelphia entered one in the Cosmopolitan race of 1896. An interesting early variant was a sightseeing stage built by C. S. Fairchild of Portland, Oregon; this carried eighteen passengers and was powered by a kerosene engine.

Among the pioneers in commercial vehicles were:

Charles E. Woods of the Woods Motor Vehicle Company of Chicago, builder of light electric delivery wagons.

Hiram P. Maxim, then connected with the Pope Company at Hartford, Connecticut.

L. F. N. Baldwin, who converted a Boston horse van into a steam wagon with a 6 horsepower engine and a side chain-drive.

Alexander Winton, whose Winton delivery wagon was the first gasoline commercial vehicle produced for sale in any quantity, eight being under construction in October, 1898.

Charles E. Duryea, also in 1898, with a three-wheel gasoline delivery wagon, weight 1,000 pounds.

A. L. Riker, who built for B. Altman & Co., New York City, in 1898, electric delivery wagons which were the first to be operated regularly by a large metropolitan store.

Electric vehicles, with the Pope and Whithey millions behind them, had the better of their gasoline and steam competitors in the late nineties, not only in the matter of city goods deliveries, but also in cabs for hire. Electric cab service began in New York City in 1 897, and soon after was extended to other cities under the same financial auspices. Electricity held the advantage for some years against the challenge of steam and gasoline; but its prestige was
weakened in 1900 when Altman’s, after three years’ trial of electrics, switched to gasoline delivery wagons. However, only three gasoline cars were exhibited in Madison Square Garden at the 1900 show, the first exclusive automobile show held in America. In that year Detroit Automobile Company, predecessor of Cadillac, introduced a most advanced gasoline delivery wagon, unusual for its aluminum, gun metal, and nickel axles. No market seems to have been found for it, however. The year 1900 saw also the founding of the Autocar Company of Philadelphia and,
in Detroit, the first step in the evolution of General Motors Truck.

General Motors Truck

In 1900 Max Grabowsky built and sold to the American Garment Cleaning Company a commercial vehicle, powered by a single-cylinder horizontal engine. In 1902 he organized the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company which put out 200 units in its first year. Moving to Pontiac in 1904, Rapid erected there the first building in America for the exclusive manufacture of self-propelled commercial vehicles. In 1908 General Motors acquired a majority of Rapid Motor Vehicle stock. Shortly afterward Reliance Motor Truck Company of Owosso, organized in 1905, also came into General Motors, and a sales company was organized to handle the output of both truck companies under the name of General Motors Truck Company. This company took over manufacturing operations in 1912, and moved Reliance to Pontiac in 1913.

Between 1900 and 1910 the gasoline commercial car developed a decided supremacy for all-round use, but the electric delivery wagon had made a place for itself in cities and for light merchandise. The rout of the steam cars, however, was complete. The light steam delivery wagon disappeared from the market by 1905, the heavy steam truck by 1910. Except for a few pioneers, like Rapid, which staked everything on truck specialization, most of the trucks produced from 1900 to 1910 were adaptations of commercial bodies to stock passenger car chassis. In the next five years of fast and furious evolution the commercial vehicle manufacturers had settled down more or less to a standard type “distinguished by a pressed or rolled steel frame, four-cylinder vertical engine mounted in front, water-cooled, with magneto ignition, three-speed selective gear transmission, shaft and worm-gear drive to rear-axle differential, seat back of hood and dash, left-side drive with wheel-steering and center-control levers”.

Having led in establishing some of these fundamental principles of design in gasoline commercial vehicles, General Motors Truck in 1912 recognized the usefulness of electric delivery wagons for city use by building a full line of electric delivery wagons, which it continued until 1916. By that time refinements in the construction of light gasoline cars had reached a point at which the electric delivery wagon business might be expected to show diminishing returns. The small, light delivery wagon, adapted to a passenger car chassis, had shown its possibilities early. Both Cadillac and Oldsmobile had offered such delivery wagons in 1904, the latter carrying off first prize in its class against stiff competition in the Automobile Club of America tests. These two manufacturers soon after went into the production of larger cars, the light delivery wagon business going elsewhere. But in 1917, after General Motors and Chevrolet came together, Chevrolet began the manufacture of commercial units, a decision which may have had a bearing upon the abandonment of electric delivery wagon manufacture by General Motors Truck.

Chevrolet Commercial Vehicles

The light-weight commercial car production of Chevrolet, which has since grown to tremendous figures, began modestly with the manufacture of 437 chassis and 40 light delivery wagons. The commercial chassis, one-half ton with open body, was priced at $595 f.o.b. Flint. A one-ton truck, known at the Model T, and powered with the FA four-cylinder motor, was introduced in 1918 at from $1,125 to $1,320. Prices on comparable units rose with the advancing price levels until the latter part of 1920 and then began to drop with increasing quantity production. In 1933 the halfton chassis, much more powerful than the original of 1917, and powered with a six-cylinder motor instead of a four, sold for $330, and the larger truck, capacity increased to one and one half tons, sold for $480. During the intervening period production of Chevrolet commercial units rose steadily year by year to a peak of 344,963 in 1929, when commercial cars represented more than 25 percent of total Chevrolet unit production. Through the entire Chevrolet truck experience, its commercial units have been roughly 17 percent of total production, more than 1,500,000 units having been manufactured since 1917.

In 1927 Chevrolet undertook on a small scale to build part of its commercial bodies, especially closed cabs; and in 1929 added a high-grade body known as the Sedan Delivery. In 1930 it introduced single and dual wheels as standard equipment on the heavy duty truck, and brought out a one and one half ton truck with 157-inch wheelbase.

Owing to the large production necessary, securing proper bodies for installation of Chevrolet commercial bodies had become a major problem, leading to the acquisition in 1930 of the Martin-Parry Corporation plants in Indianapolis, then one of the largest commercial car body builders in the world. The formation of the Chevrolet Commercial Body division followed, with emphasis upon advanced design, volume production, improved material, sales control, and GMAC financing. Since this acquisition Chevrolet’s participation in the total commercial car market has steadily increased from 32.7 percent of the 1930 business available in the weight class in which it sells trucks to approximately 50 percent of the business available in 1933. The latter figure means that Chevrolet sold approximately as many cars in this class as all its competitors combined.

Yellow Truck & Coach

Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company, a Maine corporation, succeeded the Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company, which was incorporated in the year 1910.

Yellow Cab grew out of the Walden W. Shaw Auto Livery Company, operating taxicabs at loth and Wabash streets, Chicago. Mr. Shaw was president, and Mr. John D. Hertz, vice-president and general manager. Mr. Hertz described their condition, after a disastrous strike, as bankrupt, $97,000 in debt and with nothing but forty battered cars as assets. The Shaw Company and another taxicab
company, the City Motor Cab Company, were merged into a Maine corporation on August 25, 1910.

After a year’s work, the first specially designed taxicab was completed on Christmas morning, 1914, and it was manufactured in 1915. With its service record of 600,000 miles appended, this famous cab was shown at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago in 1933.

Forty cabs of this model were built during the first seven months of 1915, and placed in service on Chicago streets on August 2, 1915. In 1916 a small factory at 310 East Huron Street, Chicago, with eighty workers, was turning out one car a day. Sole ownership of the company was acquired by the Walden W. Shaw Corporation, a New York organization, in 1916. Three years later the Auto Livery Company ceased operating taxicabs, confining its activities entirely to manufacturing commercial vehicles. Taxicab operation was continued by the Walden W. Shaw Corporation which in 1919 became Chicago Yellow Cab Company, Incorporated.

In evolving a sturdy taxicab, a nation-wide demand there had been uncovered. Orders for cabs began to come in from other cities, and production rose to twenty-five cars a day. In 1920 the Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company was formed to succeed the Shaw Livery Company, and a further separation of the Yellow and Shaw interests followed in 1921. The branching-out process which we have seen so often in automotive history began, resulting in the formation of Yellow Motor Coach Company in November, 1922, and Yellow Sleeve Valve Engine Works at East Moline, Illinois, within the following month. Yellow Manufacturing Acceptance Corporation was formed in December, 1923, to finance sales.

A merger of the General Motors Truck properties and the Yellow interests was effected in September, 1925, when Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company, formerly Yellow Cab Manufacturing Company, acquired all the stock of both General Motors Truck Corporation and General Motors Truck Company from General Motors Corporation in exchange for a controlling interest, now above 50 percent, in the Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company.

The Yellow Truck & Coach Manufacturing Company, through its subsidiaries, builds and sells trucks, motor coaches, and taxicabs of a wide variety, thoroughly adapted to the complex needs of the commercial world. The merger brought together General Motors Truck, which had been active in its field for seventeen years, and the leading manufacturer of motor coaches and taxicabs. This company continues to be one of the largest builders of commercial vehicles, with practically all of the leading coach operators in the United States using its equipment. A special type of omnibus developed for the purpose was selected to provide transportation within the grounds of the Worlds Fair of 1933. The company’s products include a complete line of trucks from one and one half tons to fifteen tons, as well as trailers.

Manufacture of these vehicles is centralized at Pontiac, Michigan. The General Motors Truck plant in Pontiac which was completed late in 1927 is the largest plant in the world devoted exclusively to the manufacture of commercial vehicles.