VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1933-1936 34 Master "car number" (aka: VIN) question

Should be "DA".....Joe

TARRYTOWN-on-HUDSON

The Chevrolet Motor Company plant in New York City was located in a rough area, and protection money had to be paid to the area’ criminals. Thus on 28 June 1914 it was announced that Durant had purchased the old Maxwell-Briscoe Motor Company’s Plant at Tarrytown, New York State, to build Chevolets to supply the demand from the Atlantic Coast and also the export trade. The plant was located at Kingland Point, Tarrytown. The price paid was $267,000 and was acquired by the Chevrolet Motor Company of New York. It was located directly on the Hudson River and had been used as an automobile factory since the beginning of the automobile industry. The Tarrytown plant was possibly the first dedicated (instead of the Olds Detroit plant that only built gas engines in the first year) automobile factory in the world, built in 1899-1900 period by the Mobile Steamer Co which built production 1900 model light steam cars. When that company ceased operations, the plant remained idle for a while until the Maxwell-Briscoe Motor Company was organized to manufacture a small gasoline engine from the designs of Mr J.D. Maxwell. This new company took over control of the Kingsland Point plant and as business after a period of years outgrew the capacity, and as there was little scope for expansion, other plants were secured by a new Holding Company, the United States Motor Company in Beekman Avenue, Tarrytown and also Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and later a large new plant in New Castle, Indiana, as well as plants in Detroit and Hartford, Connecticut. The Kingland Point plant was closed after the United States Motors Company wentinto liquidation, and efforts had been made since then to dispose of it. The United States company as a result of the liquidation had turned its holdings back into the individual subsidiary companies, and that included Maxwell-Briscoe and and also Maxwell-Chalmers, which was rescued by Walter P. Chrysler after having been Buick General Manager, then re-organiser of Willys-Overland of Cleveland, Ohio and also their Canadian subsidiary based in Toronto, Ontario; the Maxwell-Chalmers company then became Chrysler Motor Corporation after marketing the car which bore Chrysler’s name. The Providence, RI Plant was sold to the Universal Winding Company, Providence in December 1913 and Maxwell-Briscoe decided to concentrate on manufacturing automobiles in the Detroit Plant instead, which meant that the Kingland Point Plant was surplus to requirements.
Durant stated that the 57th Street, New York City and the Tarrytown Plant were to be combined under the New York managaement to build Right-hand Drive Chevrolets. After various alterations the Plant was expected to start operations on 1 January 1915 with an output of 50 cars per day, whilst the New York City Plant could only manage twenty cars.The Plant stood on a site of ten acres between the tracks of the New York Central Railroad and the Hudson River, with buildings of 205,000 square ft. of floor space, of brick construction, four stories high. This information is extracted from The Horseless Age 8 July 1914 and also The Automobile 2 July 1914.
Actual deliveries of 490 models were delayed beyond 1 January 1915 until 1 June, and Tarrytown reported that 4,902 cars were built before 31 December that year.
The Beckman Avenue plant at Tarrytown was later purchased by Chevrolet in early 1915 which further helped to increase floor space and production. An article in The Automobile 28 June 1914 also stressed the importance of future export trade and the Right-hand Drive foreign markets.

Chevrolet vehicles could now be shipped by barge down the Hudson to the Port of New York, then off to export markets, or by rail. The idea was to combine the management of the two plants and all the Right-Hand Drive cars would be built there, including those for those Canadian Provinces that drove on the left, Newfoundland, only converting to driving on the right in 1947. This plant was allocated the Plant Code #2 after January 1917 along with New York City. However, the Oshawa Plant seems to have produced r.h.d. cars for the left-driving Provinces, and known 1916 Model 490 Advertisements in Canada do show that r.h.d. cars were available: the first r.h.d. Canadian 490s in the U.K. were 1919 Models.

BLOOMFIELD, NEW JERSEY, CHEVROLET BOXING PLANT

The Tarrytown, new York, Plant had started exporting C.K.D. kits for assembly overseas [in Københaven, Denmark] in November 1923, with 432 units exported. This then continued throughout 1924, with peaks and troughs of units exported until the spring of 1925.

Chevrolet’s Bloomfield, New Jersey Boxing Plant opened in May 1925 and started exporting boxed kits of vehicles: cars, light deliveries and trucks, plus spare parts and engines, through the auspices of the Export Company in New York City [though the foreign assembly plants gradually became independendent of the Export Company itself as they opened in place of directly-run sales offices]. Tarrytown, New York, Plant had claimed that they could not cope with the orders for crated components, and so the dedicated plant was opened to cate for the burgeoning export market. However, Tarrytown continued to supply C.K.D. kits in May [2,592] and June [432] 1925 in parallel with Bloomfield who produced 1,392 and 4,608 units respectively. From then on, Tarrytown concentrated on domestic and export S.U.P. orders for cars and trucks exclusively.

General Motors World from 1936 describes the operations at Bloomfield which were unique in General Motors. The idea was to pack as many parts as possible, sourced from all over the U.S. [and Canada?], for overseas assembly. This packing operation had to be carried out so that each in. of each case was utilized without upsetting the unit packing methods, on the basis that shipping costs depended on the size and number of cases just as now with Containers. These problems took several years to resolve to the optimum in fact, but in the end the methods used were with hindsight ingenious. There were two buildings allocated to Export boxing, with in-bound and out-bound sides. On the in-bound side, spur railroad tracks extended along a platform running the length of the building. Freight cars were run in alongside the platform and then unloaded directly. The items were then taken down the material-trucking aisles to the storage spaces on either side of the various packing-lines, which ran cross-wise through the building. Each line had its own material to pack into cases, which were assembled from pre-built sections and lined with waterproof paper. These cases were of pine, and the same principle applied also to the Canadian cases. It was this timber that L.E.P. then re-used to box up vehicles for export again! As the cases proceeded down the conveyors provided, more and more parts were put in until at last the finished case, nailed, stencilled, wired and waterproofed rolled to the out-bound side of the building for loading by a gantry crane to a freight car, and then for the U.K. down to New York City docks for shipment to, at this time to London [and then by lighter to Chiswick]. The Material Department at Bloomfield used precision methods and scheduling to ensure that inbound material was never two or three days in the plant. In 1936 the motor packing line had a schedule of 500 engines per day, taking in and repacking six carloads of material per day, approximately! These were supplied from Flint motor plant still.