Trucks

Until 1935, when the annual Automobile Show in Manhattan was moved ahead two months to November, year-end motor news was completely monopolized by the prima donnas of the passenger car industry. Ignored were trucks & buses, the output of which in better days rolled up a wholesale value of more than $500,000,000 yearly and last year was worth $388,000,000. Last week for the first time the truck industry had an opportunity to flourish its record.

Production of 750,000 units was only 10% under the 1929 peak and made 1935 the second biggest truck year in U. S. history. The trend to lighter trucks, however, has reduced dollar volume, which was more than 30% below 1929. Government spending boosted sales, but the prime cause for the truck makers' burst of speed was the spark plug of general business recovery.

Style & Comfort, as truck makers belatedly learned from the passenger car industry, appeal to even the most hard-boiled operator. Streamlining is a feature of most modern trucks, not because it offers any material economy at average truck speeds but simply because a pleasantly bulbous monster with plenty of chromium sells faster than a dull, angular one. Cabs are comfortable, smartly finished, scientifically ventilated, and more of them have been shoved forward over the engine. Performance has been stepped up but SAFETY is now the watchword. A good truck will stop faster than a light roadster, and while pleasure car accidents have increased nearly 60% in the past eight years, commercial vehicle accidents have risen only about 10%. Bus accidents have actually declined. Nearly all truckmakers are experimenting with Diesel engines, though only 600 Diesel-powered units were put on the roads last year. Of those only about one-third were in new chassis, the rest going into models previously powered by gasoline. Milwaukee's Sterling is a leader in the Diesel truck field, but its production is still trifling. Federal truck regulation is expected to boom the Diesel makers, for truck operators, facing higher labor costs, may try to economize on fuel.

The Industry. Only 14 passenger car makers or their affiliates produced all the 3,400,000 pleasure vehicles made in the U. S. and Canada last year. With a 1935 production of 750,000 units, the truck industry consists of some 50 companies, most of which are known only to the people who buy trucks. Many have a distinctly regional flavor. Brockway Motor is strong in the Northeast. Kleiber of San Francisco, Moreland of Burbank, Kenworth of Seattle, distribute on the Pacific Coast. Corbitt Co. is a North Carolina concern.

A number of truck makers are specialists. Four Wheel Drive Auto Co.'s product is popular with municipalities for road building and snow removal. Marmon-Herrington also makes four-wheel drives, largely for the Army. Hug, another contractors' and municipal truck, is made in Highland, Ill. Few people suspect that Yale & Towne (locks) is a builder of electric trucks.

As in the automobile industry, however, the bulk of the truck business is concentrated in a handful of companies. Ford and Chevrolet make nearly three-fourths of all U. S. trucks sold. Dodge makes another 10%. Biggest non-passenger-car truck builder is International Harvester, with still another 10% of the business. One good reason for Harvester's dominant position among the independents is the fact that one out of every four trucks is a farm truck. In the first ten months of last year these four companies sold 91% of all commercial vehicles registered.

Regarded as a non-passenger truck, though its maker is 51% owned by General Motors, is GMC, which accounts for about 2% of the business. Reo's famed Speed Wagons and heavy-duties run about 1 % in the registration figures. Studebaker and Willys each make a few thousand yearly, and the rest of the truck makers share a tiny market that is growing tinier. Prosperity returned only to the makers of light trucks last year.

Unit figures are somewhat misleading, since nine-tenths of truck business is in low-priced, low-capacity units. White Motor makes a zoo-passenger bus with a twelve-cylinder "pancake" motor (cylinders opposed horizontally instead of in a V), which sells for $16,000. A bus is only one unit in production figures, but $16,000 would buy 25 Chevrolet delivery wagons. A ten-ton Mack truck costs around $8,000 without body, a price which would purchase a sizable fleet of Dodges.

Assembled v. Manufactured. A common characteristic of the majority of truckmakers is that their product is assembled. Motors may be bought from Hercules Motors, Lycoming Manufacturing, Continental Motors or Waukesha, wheels from Budd, axles from Timken, brakes from Bendix. Diamond-T is the fastest selling assembled truck. Stewart and Federal are both assembled. "Assembled" is a fighting word in the truck in- dustry because companies that machine most of their own parts look down their noses at the assemblers, terming their own product "manufactured." This incenses the "assembled" truckmen, for the reason that all motor vehicles--trucks, buses and passenger cars--are assembled to some degree. The three leading "manufactured" truck makers:

Autocar's first catalog in 1898 listed a $450 "package carrier fitted with special gear, capacity 700 Ib. including driver." For the next few years Autocar was a popular passenger make, sporting a propeller shaft at a time when most cars were chain-driven. It pioneered the porcelain spark plug in the U. S., and its thread has since become standard for all spark plugs. In 1911 Autocar started to specialize on trucks, now makes models from 2% 1/2 ton to 15 1/2 ton capacity. An Autocar feature was long the under-the-seat motor, now being adopted by other truck makers. One advantage is increased payload per inch of wheelbase, an important factor because of legal limitations on truck lengths. Short trucks are also easier to maneuver in cramped quarters, and Autocars are a favorite with coal dealers. Autocar has paid no dividend on its common stock since 1921, though in the War boom it once paid $10 in one year including a $1 "Red Cross" special. Sales have dropped about 50% since 1929 when the company took in $15,600,000, kept $854,000 as profit. Deficits have since been the rule but the company is thoroughly solvent.

Mack was founded by John Mack, a Brooklyn stationary engineer who had two brothers in the wagon-building business. The first Mack truck took three years to build, cost $25,000, was a failure. By 1906 Mr. Mack was able to turn out a ten-ton model that worked, and the company has been making heavy-duty trucks ever since. After a series of pre-War mergers, Founder Mack retired with $1,000,000. Somewhat later he stepped off a street car in the company's home town of Allentown, Pa., was run down and killed by a Republic truck.

Head of Mack since 1916 has been Alfred J. Brosseau, a Shakespeare student who sometimes makes his lunch on a large red apple and six glasses of water. He built up Mack's commanding position in the heavy-duty field, is official spokesman for the truckmakers as head of the Automobile Manufacturers Association's truck division. In 1925 Mack made $9,400,000, a figure never since equaled, though sales in 1929 were $57,000,000. Last year Mack made $17,000.

White also dates from the century's turn, the first White being a steam-powered passenger model built by a son of the late Thomas H. White, who founded White Sewing Machine Co. after the Civil War and got into transportation by way of roller skates and bicycles. White abandoned automobiles for trucks in 1918. During the War, White made its all-time production record of 15,000 units, most of which went to France. Management was in the hands of the founder's sons until 1929, when Walter White was killed in an automobile accident. Coca-Cola's Robert W. Woodruff then stepped in but soon found commuting between Coca-Cola offices in Atlanta and White's offices in Cleveland too strenuous. After Ashton G. Bean was installed as president, White went to the altar with Studebaker, but a 3% stockholders' minority was unable to hold its peace forever, and the union was never solemnized. Upshot was the Studebaker receivership, the Studebaker-Pierce

Arrow divorce and White's new independence.

President since President Bean's death last spring has been ruddy, sociable Robert Fager Black, onetime head of Brockway, onetime vice president of Mack. Hardly had he had time to hang his hat in his new office before he was confronted with a strike, which was peacefully settled after Mr. Black bought the picketers balls, bats and gloves, set them to base-balling in a nearby parking lot. White's Black has not lifted the company out of the red, but he is on record with the prediction that White's 1936 production will top the Wartime record by 10,000 units. One of the ablest merchandisers in the industry, he is credited with having boosted White's morale to a new peak.

WTith its Indiana line--an "assembled" product--White is the only truck company that blankets the entire price field. Indianas are priced as low as $695. Big Whites, like the 28-ton tractor-trailer lately delivered to a coal mining company for stripping operations, are virtually custom made and priced accordingly. White's production last year was about 8,000 trucks, 1,000 buses, with a total value of some $20,000,000.

Last week White's Black predicted that 1936 would be biggest truck year on record. Cause for his optimism is to be found in the fact that one out of every three of the 3,550,000 trucks on the road today were built before 1928. The life expectancy of trucks is considerably higher than that of passenger cars, but there are thousands of trucks in daily service with hand horns, two-wheel brakes, open cabs, no self-starters, no lights.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.