Thread by @iowahawkblog

prepping for today's #DavesCarIDService I saw this neato pic from the always wonderful @TracesofTexas (forwarded by @DruncleWill) leading down a weird historical rabbit hole. First, I can say the truck here is a 1910-15 Universal. Next, the rabbit hole.

https://twitter.com/TracesofTexas/status/1337574138534359040

Confession: even in my advanced age and state of automotive OCD, I had previously never heard of Universal Motor Trucks. But here it's conveniently labeled as such on the truck's chassis. So I decided to dig for more info.

Warning: this will be a long thread about obscure industrialists from more than 100 years ago that ultimately has no moral, other than stuff is more connected than you think. If that is tedious to you, you might as well mute this thread now.

Anyhoo, it's nigh impossible to find any contemporary pictures of Universal trucks, and impossible to find pics of restored ones. I'd venture there can't be more that a small handful of remaining survivors anywhere, unlike Mack, GMC or other big trucks of the time.

That's not unusual though, there were hundreds of overnight motor vehicle companies that came and went in the early 1900s. But despite the lack of pics & info, obviously Universal must've have been prominent enough to make a fleet sale to Texaco.

So here's what I found: the Universal Motor Truck Co was founded in Detroit in 1910, and was out of business by 1915, which makes dating the truck kind of easy. UMTCo had an impeccable automotive pedigree through its founder Albert Fisher & president Walter Flanders.

Albert Fisher was previously founder of the Fisher Body Co, which you may recognize from seeing the "Body By Fisher" door jamb of GM cars. He is probably also one of the worst decision makers in business history, at least in terms of blowing opportunities.

Fisher, born in 1864, apprenticed as a carriage maker in Detroit and by the late 1890s was making a few bodies for the quickly expanding auto biz there. In the early 00's an obscure newcomer named Henry Ford asked him to build 50 bodies in exchange for Ford Co stock. He said no.

Blown opportunity #1: turning down pre-IPO Ford Motor Co stock that would have been worth billions in today dollars. But I guess you can't blame him for demanding cash up front from a startup (Ford declined Fisher's cash-only counter offer).

Besides Fisher Body was starting to do brisk business anyway, especially for Cadillac and a few other makes that were consolidating into a new entity called "General Motors." In fact he hired several of his nephews to help run his operation, leading to Blown Opportunity #2.

As an aside, Albert Fisher's company was called Standard Wagon Works; for reasons unknown he decided to to sell his share to the 7 nephews (all brothers) he hired to work there, and it 1908 the 7 brothers incorporated as the Fisher Body Company.

As best as I can determine, Albert Fisher walked away with a million or two from his nephews, so it wasn't exactly an act of familial generosity. In 1919, GM bought a 60% share of Fisher from the 7 brothers for $200 million; around $5-$8 billion in today money. Oops.

I don't know if he regretted those blown opportunities, but in 1910 Fisher decided to plow those nephew millions into a new idea: The Universal Motor Truck Co, and hired Walter Flanders (then president of Studebaker) to run it.

Flanders was Henry Ford's first production manager and the "F" in E-M-F (for Everitt Metzgers Flanders), an early car company that was bought out by Studebaker in 1909, when Studebaker was still mainly a farm wagon maker. He then became president of Studebaker's car operation.

So with 2 fairly high profile car industry pioneers at the helm, the Universal Motor Truck Co was founded in 1910, capitalized at $3 million, with a sizeable plant at what is today 1591 Theodore Street Detroit, and a sizeable payroll of 2500 workers.

And by 1915... poof. Gone. And very little evidence that they sold many trucks, other than a handful of internet pics. The Traces of Texas photo is probably the best one you'll ever see.

I don't know the reasons for the apparent lack of sales; I did find a 1913 NY newspaper clipping which a rep of UMTCo assured a reporter that an undescribed controversy involving the Universal Motor Truck Co of NY dealership had nothing to do with the parent company.

After UMTCo folded, it doesn't appear Albert Fisher held any other official title in the car biz, and passed away in 1942.

Walter Flanders went on be part of Woodrow Wilson's council for mechanizing US military in WW1, and ran Maxwell for a while, which later became Chrysler.

I guess somewhat ironically, Walter Flanders died in a car wreck in 1923, apparently as a result of trying to pass another car.

So what happened to the remains of the Universal Motor Truck Company?

Some of their machinery was acquired by the equally obscure Chicago Motor Truck Co.

But the Universal Motor Truck Co. plant in Detroit was purchased by... the Fisher Body Company, and became Fisher Body Plant #10. Maybe an act of kindness by Albert's now-rich nephews.

Fisher Plant 10 was mainly utilized to make enclosed body Cadillacs, but in WW2 it churned out Sherman tanks.

After the war, GM used it as a manufacturing site for Hydramatic transmissions.

Among the workers at UMTCo / Fisher Body 10 / Hydramatic was a young man named Phillip Levine who would in 2011-2012 become Poet Laureate of the US. Among his poems is "The Suit" which contains the line "Detroit Transmission" referencing his days as a worker there.

But like too much of Detroit, the plant fell into disuse and disrepair. In its last incarnation it was a cold storage location, which was ravaged by a fire in 2008 and became a spot for Detroit Ruins tourism. It was eventually leveled and is today a large vacant lot.

And so we reach the bottom of my rabbit hole precipitated by a picture of a Texaco gasoline truck. Like I said, there really isn't a point or moral here, other than things are connected in odd ways. And maybe we all are beholden to entropy.

And on that note I will conclude today's strange episode of Dave's Car ID Service, and promise the next one will be more on-brand.

Until then, you can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big bright Texaco star.

now that I've had a little more coffee and a chance to think on it, maybe there is a larger point to this and other obscure stuff I post about; and it's not just about me being Twitter's resident Cliff Clavin.

In Cormac McCarthy's book 'The Road' there is a theme of the death of memory. In a post apocalyptic world, the man struggles to remember, for his son, trout fishing. The man has never fished for trout, and the last person who actual has is dead.

But the man recognizes even though he hasn't that memory, it is important to transmit it to his son. When all the memory of the thing is gone, then the thing too is gone, and it for all intents and purposes it never had existed.

I'm old but not really old enough to remember 1910 truck companies, or Jerry Colonna radio catch phrases, and such; but I did know people who remembered them. Boring or not, I feel an obligation to forestall the eventual evaporation of those memories into nothingness.

With every person who passes on, we lose a little bit of our collective memory; capital-H History curates presumably important stuff like wars and politicians, but there is delightful stuff in the margins of somewhat recent culture that really is at risk of memory extinction.

case in point, I was talking last night to a 20 year old and a 23 year old, and had to explain to them who Kato Kaelin is. I was a bit surprised, but then realized how quickly a household name becomes a $1000 Jeopardy question.

So anyway I guess yammering about 1927 cars and music and movies and minor celebrities are my second hand memories of trout fishing. I don't expect it has inspired any Gen Z kids to become experts on 1905 Locomobiles, but at least I tried to pass on that memory baton.

And with that, I will mercifully end this thread with the hope that some obsessive weirdo 100 years from now stumbles on it.