Hale, Kilburn & Co., Hale & Kilburn Mfg. Co., Hale and Kilburn, Edward G. Budd, Joseph Ledwinka, American Pulley Co., Coachbult.com



Hale, Kilburn & Co. est. 1873 - (aka Hale & Kilburn) bodies from 1910-1925 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania & 1925-1933 Indianapolis, Indiana

Edward Gowan Budd was born on Dec. 28, 1870 in Smyrna, Delaware to Henry George Budd, Smyrna’s Justice of the Peace. From an early age, Budd had an aptitude for all things mechanical and following his graduation from high school, he apprenticed as a machinist at Smyrna’s G. W. and S. Taylor Iron Works. He moved to nearby Philadelphia in 1890 taking a job as a machinist at the Sellers Machine and Foundry Co. and later on the Bement-Pond Tool Company (Niles-Bement-Pond starting in 1899), a manufacturer of machines tools and hydraulic presses. At night Budd took classes in drafting and engineering at the Franklin Institute, the University of Pennsylvania and the International Correspondence School.

A friend of Budd’s named Thomas Corscaden designed a stamped sheet-steel pulley that was both lighter and cheaper to produce than traditional cast-iron versions and sold the design to George Cresson, the owner of the Philadelphia’s American Pulley Co. Budd joined his friend at American Pulley as their chief draftsman in 1898, and married his wife Mary the following year.

Aside for their pulleys, American manufactured many other items including stamped steel pedestals that were built for Hale & Kilburn, a Philadelphia furniture manufacturer that specialized in producing seating for railways, subways and trolleys.

Located at 48-50 North 6th St. (at Arch St.), Hale & Kilburn started off building parlor furniture, commodes and other household products in 1873. By the turn of the century they had become famous for their streetcar and railroad seating. They even developed a “walkover” railroad bench seat that incorporated a pedestal that allowed it to be rotated 180 degrees allowing it to face forward or backward depending on the direction of train. At the time, most of their seating was built using cast-iron frames and pedestals.

Budd’s expertise in stamped steel engineering caught the attention of Hale & Kilburn’s management and in 1902 they hired him away with an offer twice his former salary. His job was to develop pressed steel replacements for their cast-metal products, thereby reducing both their weight and their cost. Using a combination of sheet steel stampings and oxy-acetylene welding, he succeeded and was appointed works manager within a couple of years.

In 1895, French chemist Henry Le Chatelier discovered that combustion of equal quantities of acetylene and oxygen produced a 6000° F flame, a flame significantly hotter than any produced by the various gases used previously. In 1903, Thomas Wilson created the first oxyacetylene torch, and in 1907, the country’s first oxygen plant was built in Buffalo, New York. A Frenchman named David Bourneville developed a technique that was perfected by a Hale & Kilburn employee named Morris Lachman, who worked with Budd and deserves a share of the credit for his pioneering work in the field. Budd and Lachaman also experiment with arc-welding, a technique developed by an American named C.L Coffin in 1890. With the introduction of coated stick electrodes in the early 1900s, the process could now be used to produce very strong spot welds, a key to producing automobile bodies.

With the new technology, Hale & Kilburn produced hundreds of Budd-designed all-steel passenger cars for the Pullman Company in the early 1900s. The benefits were similar to that of the all-steel auto body, they were lighter, stronger and enjoyed the additional benefit of being significantly more fire resistant, a factor very important to an industry plagued by deadly railway passenger fires.

Business increased to the point that Hale & Kilburn moved to larger quarters located adjacent to the main Pennsylvania Railroad line at 2700 17th St. and Lehigh Ave in 1905. Budd was given a salary increase as well as stock options that proved useful a number of years later.

Within a short time Budd began experimenting with early attempts at shallow-draw sheet-metal stamping, producing small runs sheet metal panels for the King and Paige Co.’s composite automobile bodies.

In 1909, Emil Nelson, Chief Engineer of the Hupp Motor Car Co. approached Budd looking for help with developing a true all-metal body. In a 1948 address Budd recalled: "None of the Detroit plants would contract for this body,"

Recent improvements in sheet steel production now made it possible to produce larger stampings with a uniform thickness, however the compound curves needed for automobile bodies still had to be built from numerous individual stampings that had to be welded together by hand. However, both Hupp and Budd felt that the future lay in stamped sheet-steel bodies. Hale & Kilburn began to supply Hupp with a number of pressed steel panels and Budd started development of an all-steel automobile body.

Deep draw stamping technology had yet to be developed so Budd and Nelson devised a system where the body’s numerous steel stampings were welded together by hand and supported by a crude system of angle iron supports that held the welded subassemblies together. The disassembled bodies were shipped by rail to Detroit where they were put back together, painted and trimmed in the Hupp factory. The resulting automobile was the 1912 Hupmobile Model 32, the first car produced in Detroit with an all-steel production body. In addition to the Model 32 touring and roadster, an all-metal coupe was offered. Unfortunately Nelson left Hupmobile later that year and subsequent Model 32s were equipped with standard composite bodies.

Hupmobile was not the first to explore the all-metal body. Both Marmon and Pierce-Arrow had been building riveted cast aluminum bodies for a number of years, however the expense and expertise involved made cast aluminum impractical for a low-to-medium priced automaker like Hupp.

During 1911 Hale & Kilburn was acquired by J.P Morgan for $9 million, and the existing management was replaced by Morgan administrators who had little to no experience in the metal-stamping business. Budd quickly became frustrated and suffered a nervous breakdown later in the year. After a couple of month’s recuperation in Europe, he returned to Philadelphia in early 1912 and resigned.

With $75,000 of his own savings, $15,000 from a friend of the family’s named A. Robinson McIlvaine and $10,000 from another friend, J.S. Williams, Budd formed the Edward G. Budd Mfg. Co. on July 22, 1912. The firm was capitalized at $100,000 with Budd as president and McIlvaine, secretary. An office was leased in the North American Building at 121 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, and two good friends of Budd’s from Hale & Kilburn, Joseph Ledwinka and Russell Leidy joined the firm.

Joseph Ledwinka was an Austrian immigrant whom Budd had hired for $18 per week in 1910s while he was still in charge of Hale & Kilburn. A cousin of the equally-gifted Hans Ledwinka, the designer of the Tatra, Joseph Ledwinka’s talent with sheet metal was directly responsible for the eventual success of the firm. From the teens through the forties, Ledwinka would be awarded hundreds of patents, many of which produced significant revenues for Budd when they were licensed to other body builders and automakers.

Hale & Kilburn survived without Budd and Ledwinka, and continued building bus bodies, commercial bodies, railway cars and railway seating through the teens and early twenties.

Following Charles M. Schwalb's takeover of Stutz in 1923, the owner of of Bethlehem Steel purchased Hale & Kilburn and moved it to Indianapolis to be near the Stutz factory. They discontinued all of their railroad work and concentrated on production bodies for Stutz. They also built bodies for the Trumbull Automobile, another small Indianapolis automaker.

For a number of years Stutz had ordered custom bodies from LeBaron who built them in their Bridgeport, Connecticut factory. After Briggs purchased LeBaron in 1928, Stutz started ordering both their series custom and production bodies from the LeBaron-Detroit factory in Detroit. They ordered them "in the white" and had Hale & Kilburn paint and trim them in their Indianapolis plant.

When Stutz went out of business in 1933, so did Hale & Kilburn.

The former Hale & Kilburn factory in Philadelphia was used by another Schwab controlled firm, the American Motor Body Corp. to build tandem-rear-axle buses and trucks marketed under the Six-Wheel name but also sometimes known as "Safeway" buses. From 1924 through 1928 about 400 of the six-wheel buses emerged from the American Motor Body shop. Six Wheel bought hundreds of bodies from Wolfington, including the famous Nairn Transport buses that ferried soldiers and oil workers between Beirut and Baghdad. Six Wheel/Wolfington buses were also used by the New York City’s Fifth Ave Coach Co., Boston’s Boston Elevated and Cleveland’s Ohio Light & Power Co.

The heavy duty coaches were also used in Detroit and Kansas City and were also bodied by the Auto Body Co. (an unrelated firm in Lansing, MI), American Car Co., St. Louis Car Co., Fitzgibbon & Crisp, Kuhlman, Lang and Hoover.

When Six Wheel went out of business in 1928, so did American Motor Body.

For more information please read:

Wolfington Body Company

www.buddcompany.com

www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/streamliners/index.html

Hugo Pfau - Wolfington - Cars & Parts, November 1975

William Sheppard - Careers on Wheels (Alexander Wolfington & Sons)

https://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2976632a30,00.html

Fuad Rayess - On A Bus To Baghdad - Aramco World Vol. 17 No. 5, September/October 1966

Edward G. Budd (1870-1946) "Father of the Streamliners" and The Budd Company - an address delivered by Edward Budd Jr. to the Newcomen Society in in January 1950

Pioneer Without Profit – Fortune, February 1937

Maurice D. Hendry - Budd and his All-Steel Bodies Helped Revolutionize Auto Manufacturing – The Best of Old Cars, No.1