Flint car industry’s road was broken in by horse carriages
By James M. Miller
The auto industry came to Flint in a carriage: The city’s two biggest wagon and carriage companies played major roles in bringing the new business to town. The Flint Wagon Works brought Buick to Flint, and it and the Durant-Dort Carriage Co. served as the “training school” for many of the men - William C. Durant, A.B.C. Hardy, Charles Nash, James H. Whiting and others - who would later build and run Buick, Chevrolet and other companies “These guys were starting an industry that was going to destroy another one, and making it a smooth transition,” said Dallas Dort, president of EKG Research in Flint. His grandfather was J. Dallas Dort, partner with Durant in the carriage company that bore their names. Carriage money helped finance the creation of General Motors, and when Durant was building GM, he followed the path he and Dort took when building the carriage company. He organized or bought supplier companies for Buick, as they had done for the carriage business. Durant brought different lines of cars to General Motors, for different segments of the market, as he had done with the carriage company that offered the Diamond Buggy, the Blue Ribbon and Victoria lines. Durant set up a system of dealerships and distributors as he did in the carriage trade. “The first decade of this century laid the foundation for what was to come,” said Richard Scharchburg, professor of industrial history at Kettering University. The decade’s blossoming auto industry would become the third of Flint’s three major industries, after lumber and carriages. Dort said it is ironic that the carriage companies provided the money to bring Buick here and to help start GM, essentially financing the industry that would kill off the carriage business. Even so, for most of the decade the largest vehicle producers in Flint were the Durant-Dort Carriage Co., Flint Wagon Works and W.A. Paterson Co., another carriage-maker. It wasn’t until 1910 that Buick made enough cars to out-produce one of the city’s “big three.” “The big three carriage-makers in Flint produced more wagons and carriages than any other city in the United States,” Scharchburg said. “Then you saw the explosion of the automobile industry in Flint.” Durant-Dort Co. had several vehicle, parts and supplier companies in Flint. In addition to its own brands, Durant-Dort built John Deere carriages sold by the tractor-maker, Moline brand carriages sold by the plow company, and carriages sold by Montgomery, Ward & Co. One day in December of 1903, Durant-Dort and Paterson sent a whole trainload - 45 or 46 rail cars carrying about 2,000 vehicles - to a jobber in Minneapolis. At the time it was the largest shipment from the city; later decades would see trainloads of automobiles, with rail cars decorated for the occasion as they were for the big carriage shipment. Dort said the relationship between his grandfather and Durant is an interesting one. While Durant was traveling around the country, buying every company he could find and building GM, Dort stayed in Flint, ran the profitable carriage company and helped build Flint - playing major roles in starting the YMCA here, the Industrial Mutual Association, Flint’s park system and other improvements. The two friends complemented each other well. “Durant was almost an unbridled entrepreneur, and grandfather probably wouldn’t have gotten as far without Durant,” Dort said, “and Durant might not have succeeded as well without grandfather.” Lawrence R. Gustin, author of a biography on Durant and co-author of a Buick history, said Durant had such a magnetic, energetic personality that he encouraged enthusiasm and effort in others. “There were some good, solid, hard-working people, making some important decisions, and Durant ignited them,” said Gustin, assistant director of public relations for Buick. Flint’s first auto manufacturer, A.B.C. Hardy, produced only about 52 Flint roadsters, in 1902 and 1903. He rented a corner of the former Randall Carriage Co. facility - the city’s first carriage factory - on N. Saginaw Street at Third Avenue for a time before moving to larger quarters. The Wagon Works provides probably the best example of Flint’s
industrial evolution. The wagon-maker was an outgrowth of a lumbering firm; its directors brought Buick here in 1903. The Flint Wagon Works site on W. Kearsley Street was used in all of Flint’s industrial eras: It housed a lumber mill, carriage making and auto manufacturing. Buick first occupied a brick building near the Wagon Works on W. Kearsley Street, but moved to a huge new factory on Hamilton Avenue in 1906. William A. Paterson was among the many carriage makers in America who made the transition to building cars. Paterson started making autos in 1908 and continued through 1923, at factories along Harrison Street at Third Avenue. Flint Wagon Works built the Whiting automobile from 1910 to 1912, and the Flint and Best trucks from 1912 to 1915. The century’s first decade offered some hints of what would follow. Louis Chevrolet was a driver for Buick in 1910, and he and Durant would create the Chevrolet Motor Car Co. the next year. By 1923, the booming Buick and Chevrolet factories helped draw Fisher Body here, and every year since, thousands of Flint-area workers have been employed by AC, Buick, Chevrolet, Fisher Body and their successors. The carriage industry had its own supplier companies, from body builders and top companies to tanneries, Flint Varnish Works, Michigan Paint Co., carriage pole makers and spring makers. Some carriage suppliers began supplying the auto industry, others folded. The transition from carriages to cars did not happen overnight. In an unpublished Industrial History of Flint, Frank Rodolf said: “Most startling was the growth in those dozen or so years, 1904-15, when carriage and automobile industries overlapped. For Flint’s buggy and wagon plants did not pass their greatest period of production and expansion until the automobile was well established. “Horse vehicle production was not dropped until Flint had the world’s largest single automobile plant, Buick Motor Co.” Rodolf said Flint carriage-makers hit their peak production in 1906, with 110,000 carriages, carts and wagons. Carl Crow, in his book “The City of Flint Grows Up,” noted that the 1905 Golden Jubilee, intended in part as a celebration of the carriage and wagon industry, was really its swan song. All the attention at the parade and other celebrations was captured by the horseless carriages, and in following years wagon and carriage production began to fall as auto production grew dramatically.
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