Great research Gogi. This is probably the first time, we in Team-BHP are discussing woodies, and I'm really enjoying this.
The two major aftermarket body builders of woodies in the USA, from the 1930s to the 1950s
were
- Hercules-Campbell MidState and
- J.T. Cantrell & Co.
Hercules-Campbell built wooden station wagon bodies to mount on truck chassis.
The truck-based woodie station wagons were ruggedly handsome, but also more expensive than the metal-bodied factory station wagon like the Chevrolet Suburban Carryall.
The wooden station wagon bodies were built on truck chassis
for use by resort hotels in remote scenic hillstations to transport guests to and from the nearest railroad depot, and
for use as a medium capacity school bus, mostly by elite boarding schools.
The station wagon body adapted the truck to a passenger load of eight or more.
Also trucks being more stiffly sprung, also supported a reasonable amount of the hotel guests' luggage or the school athletic teams' sports equipment.
In the sanatoria and hill resorts, guests often stayed for an entire summer and packed their wardrobe in steam-ship type trunks (called steamer trunks), which had to be stacked on the tailgate. To support the weight of the luggage, the tailgates were braced with iron strapping and suspended from steel chains.
These vehicles lived hard lives and needed special care and maintenance,
annual varnishing, indoor storage in the bad weather months and regular repairing of leaky roof fabrics.
Let's move on to the car-based woodie builders.
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The J.T. Cantrell company successfully spanned the era from horse drawn carriages to motorized wagons, and continued specialty building throughout its entire existence from 1905 to 1958.
When Henry Ford's Model T killed the carriage, the Cantrells built bodies for automobiles.
In 1915, J. T. Cantrell invented the station wagon on a Model T chassis, calling it a "depot wagon."
They were flooded with orders.
In 1925 the factory burned to the ground and was rebuilt in 1926.
The frame was ash with panels of mahogany veneer. The roof was constructed of weatherproofed canvas stretched over ash ribbing.
The frames on most of the pre-war bodies were constructed of either rock maple or mahogany, with panels of white birch, mahogany or cottonwood. One undesirable characteristic of rock maple was its twisting and warping with age. All wood parts were submerged in toxic wood primer to prevent dry rot. fungus and insect attack. Panels were waterproofed. The body frame was strongly steel braced throughout. All exposed joints were joined with waterproof glue. The completed body was finished with finest quality spar varnish, baked on.
Cantrell's got a competitor in 1932, by way of the Hercules-Campbell MidState company in Waterloo, New York.
1934 Wayne school bus on Dodge chassis
They also built wooden station wagon and truck bodies.
By 1940, Campbell had an exclusive contract with GM's Chevrolet Divn. for station wagon bodies.
Production increased into thousands and the town of Waterloo, NY pulled out of the depression and enjoyed prosperity.
After WW2, complete Chevrolet cars were shipped. Campbell would cut off the bodies from and install wooden station wagon bodies. Their yards overflowed with cars and trucks, and deliveries ran 6 to 8 weeks late.
They manufactured stake-trucks, vans and special bodies, and assembled Wayne school buses.
In the winter of 1947, the plant caught fire and burned to the ground, with huge stocks of fine wood.
After complete rebuilding the plant concentrated only on truck bodies.
They used lindenwood (Tilia) and ashwood (Fraxinus) frames with waterproof philippine mahogany(Shorea) plywood panels dipped in a clear WOODLIFE preservative.
The roof covering was of cotton cloth impregnated with rubber. Under this was cheesecloth (मांजरपाठ) with blue wadding (बुड्ढी का बाल) for insulation and cushion. The wood body was also treated with plain wood filler and the paneling with mahogany wood filler, rubbed down with sea oil, a very tough woodwall stringy material, very smooth, used in place of fine sandpaper.
The wood body then got two full coats of DuPont exterior varnish. After drying, the body was lightly sand papered and a final coat of varnish was applied. Thereupon it went on to trimming and finishing and then was loaded into a goods train.
Post WW-2, there was a shortage of new cars. So a demand arose for putting station wagon bodies on used car chassis.
After 1949 the woodie station wagon business declined.
New car makers changed over to all steel bodies with pasted on wooden veneer and later even plastic stickers that only looked like wood.
Campbell went bankrupt and shut down in 1957.
Cantrell did not go bankrupt but shut down anyway in 1958.
Ram