Trailer-maker

Into the Detroit smithy of Wagon-maker August Charles Fruehauf (rhymes with blew-off) one day in 1915 walked a lumber dealer. To the blacksmith he posed a problem: Could he make a two-wheel cart to hitch behind a truck, haul lumber from yard to job? August thought he could. In no time his two-wheelers were delivering lumber all over Detroit, and a brand-new U. S. industry was born: the commercial trailer.

Not until Depression I did highway hauling come into its own. By that time the trailer had become an adjunct to the inter-city truck. For, as a horse can pull more than it can carry, so a trailer pulled by a motor in a cab can outhaul a truck.

Because trailer-making is a very specialized industry with different problems for each type of goods to be hauled, Fruehauf earned a ride behind the cab of the zooming motortruck industry, became the Fisher of highway hauling. Building some 30 standardized types from two to 50 tons (priced from about $600 to $3,000), Fruehauf has set the industry's technological pace, makes 40% of all U. S. commercial trailers today.

A full lap ahead of competitors, Fruehauf sales last year were $14,878,641, up 126% over 1938. Net was a record $1,829,041. Last week, with their 25-acre Detroit plant newly expanded, Fruehauf officials waited patiently for the concrete floors of a big new Los Angeles plant to harden. With first-quarter sales an estimated 50% ahead of last year, they needed the extra production facilities.

Fortnight ago (to get more working capital, pay off a $1,306,000 debenture issue) they offered a $4,000,000 convertible preferred stock issue to the public through a Wall Street syndicate headed by Lehman Bros. The public ate it up in less than 90 minutes.

Reason for Fruehauf's 1939 earnings record was twofold: 1) biggest year ever for U. S. truck loadings; 2) installation last year of modern automotive production-line methods in the Detroit plant.

But it was also attributable to the smart, smooth-working executive combination of President Harvey Charles Fruehauf, 46, and his vice-president brothers: Harry Richard, 43, in charge of manufacturing, and Roy August, 31, director of sales--sons of August who made the two-wheel cart.

Tractor-trailers do almost 100% of all U. S. inter-city highway hauling today. A few months ago the Fruehauf brothers got the job of national distributor for the stainless steel trailers of Budd Manufacturing Co., gave an initial order for 10,000 stainless steel semitrailer body sets. On the market and doing nicely is Fruehauf's new light-weight Aerovan (of aluminum alloy) which, carrying a ten-ton payload, weighs three-quarters of a ton less than Fruehauf's equivalent steel model of last year. One growing reason for reducing trailer weights: many a local highway regulation restricts them.

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