Coachbult.com - Pioneer Body Company



Pioneer Body Co. - Anderson Body Co. - Sidney, Ohio 1920s-1930s

I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS FOR YOU ON ADVICE AS TO ANDERSON AND PIONEER. I HAVE
TALKED BY PHONE TO A GENTLEMAN (95 YEARS OLD)
THAT WORKED FOR THE PIONEER BODY COMPANY. HE WAS THERE IN THE LATE 20'S.HE
WORKED WITH ONE OF THE CO OWNER'S ( BILL QUINN).
HE SAID THAT BILL QUINN ALSO BOUGHT INTO ANDERSON IN THE TIME- JUST BEFORE
THE DEMISE OF ANDERSON.
HIS DUTIES WERE TO TRAVEL SEVERAL STATES AND SELL THE CAR TO AS MANY DEALERS
AS HE COULD. THEY HAD SOME SUCCESS AND SOME GREAT FUN AND STORIES TO TELL.
I HAVE HIS ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER . HE IS IN FLORIDA AT THIS TIME. BETTER
CALL SOON-- AS HE SAID-- HE IS NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER. AT 95. HE WAS A
PLEASURE TO TALK WITH AND DID NOT MIND MY CALL. HE WAS GLAD TO HEAR SOMEONE
REMEMBERED THE PIONEER BODY COMPANY.

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Pioneer Body Company (Sidney, Ohio)- 1926&1927 Hudson Super Six Roadsters. Looks very similar to Anderson Body Co roadsters – eg: 1926 Hudson Anderson Bodied Coupe & Roadsters - The Pioneer Body Co. is related to the Anderson Body Co. (the Co. that built my Coupe), but the relationship is unclear.

Butler in his Hudson book claims that Pioneer was a successor to Anderson, WRONG: Pioneer was a competitor, not a successor company. Source - Discussing and printed material from the Sidney Ohio, location of both Anderson & Pioneer. One of the founders of the company, and its namesake, W. P. Anderson, left to form his own business, the Pioneer Body Company. It was located at 421 Park Street. Pioneer Body competed directly with Anderson, making car bodies for Hudson, Studebaker and Dodge Brothers.

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1926 Hudson Models with special custom bodies by the Pioneer Body Company of Sydney, Ohio were pitured in an advertisement for Eqyptian Lacquers which appeared in the August 1926 issue of Motor. The cars shown appear to be a convertible coupe, coupe and a victoria. "photos courtesy of Pioneer Body Co"

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Sidney's role in the automobile business was headed for happier days, however. The October 24, 1923, edition of the Sidney Daily News carried the headline: "New Manufacturing Plant Organized." Local industrial heavyweights L. M. Studevant, A. J. Hess, E. J. Griffis, W. P. Anderson and Frank Thedieck took over the assets of the Sidney Mfg. Company and formed Anderson Body Company. The business manufactured auto, hearse and bus bodies of wood and metal. It was located at the corner of East Avenue and Short Clinton Street. This company helped Sidney make a lasting mark on the automobile industry.

Gathering experienced employees from the Sidney Manufacturing and the Mutual Wood Work Company, Anderson Body was an immediate success. It had secured an order for hundreds of the Anderson 'brougham' bodies from Dodge Brothers in Detroit within six weeks. By Christmas of 1923, Anderson was running day and night.

Longtime employees Robert Van Horn and Vernal Eiler recalled their experiences in a Daily News article on June 26, 1975. "We made more Dodges than anything else...We made so damn many different ones I can't remember them all, but Dodges were the biggest," recalled Mr. Van Horn. Knowing a good thing when he saw one, he left his previous job as a buggy seat maker to work for Anderson. Mr. Van Eiler was a door hanger with Mutual, but quit to work on the construction of the Big Four Bridge. After nearly falling off the structure, he accepted work as a door hanger at Anderson. "The Dodge body was the first closed car I ever worked on. They paid us at the rate of $7 per car, and we could do one or two a day," Mr. Eiler remembered.

The Anderson brougham body was a hit at the 1924 New York and Chicago auto shows. It was acclaimed as "The best designed four-passenger four-door brougham car at either show." After the wooden frame was built, metal panels were fastened on with nails or screws. Eventually, Finnish immigrants were brought in to operate special electric hammers which were used to shape the metal. Peak production was ten car bodies a day.

Anderson also made many styles of bodies for the Hudson and Studebaker vehicles. Several of these are still in existence today. One Studebaker model had a golf bag door on the right side! Toward the end of the 1920s, Anderson's fortunes foundered. Some Detroit auto makers started making their own car bodies. Locally, the problems were worse. One of the founders of the company, and its namesake, W. P. Anderson, left to form his own business, the Pioneer Body Company. It was located at 421 Park Street. Pioneer Body competed directly with Anderson, making car bodies for Hudson, Studebaker and Dodge Brothers.

By 1932, local investor C. D. Beck had taken over the plant and its assets and formed the Beck Bus Company. Mr. Beck produced bus bodies and fire trucks. He eventually moved to a new location on Russell Rd., where CompAir Leroi is now located.

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I've learned a little history of Beck and thought I would share it.

Beck began life in 1923 as Anderson Body Company in Sidney, Ohio, Anderson itself a reorganization of an earlier failed company, which manufactured, or attempted to, an automobile known as Bimel. The company Anderson Body bought was called Sidney Manufacturing. Gathering experienced employees from Sidney Mfg. and Mutual Wood Work Company, Anderson Body was an immediate success according to local history.

Anderson made bodies ( metal panels fastened to wood frames with nails or screws) for the Dodge Bros mostly, but also for Hudson and Studebaker, but toward the end of the twenties their fortunes foundered, and they had gone from running day and night and producing ten car bodies a day, to barely staying alive as auto manufacturers began making their own bodes. Worse, one of the principals (Bill Quinn) left to form his own company, (Pioneer Body Company - made roadster bodies for Hudson in 1926-1927) on Park Street in Sidney, and competed with them directly for what little business remained.

By 1932, local investor C.D. Beck had taken over the plant and its assets and formed the Beck Bus Company, producing buses and fire trucks. It was in fact Beck who finished the last Ahrens-Fox Fire Engines. "By 1953, the company was awash in red ink, and C.D. Beck & Company of Sidney, Ohio (manufacturer of intercity buses) was contracted to build the final 25 Ahrens-Fox fire engines then on order. The very last fire engine built by Ahrens-Fox personnel in Ahrens-Fox's own factory, before the Beck sub-contract took effect, was delivered on Christmas Eve, 1953, to Volunteer Fire Company #1 of New Milford, NJ."

Beck eventually moved his company to a sight on Russel Road in Sidney, where CompAir Leroi is now located.

Mack Trucks acquired C.D. Beck Company in 1956.

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For more information please read:

Beverly Rae Kimes - The Classic Car

Beverly Rae Kimes - The Classic Era

Beverly Rae Kimes - Packard: A History of the Motorcar and Company

Beverly Rae Kimes & Henry Austin Clark Jr. - Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942

Richard Burns Carson - The Olympian Cars

Raymond A. Katzell - The Splendid Stutz

Marc Ralston - Pierce Arrow

Brooks T. Brierley - There Is No Mistaking a Pierce Arrow

Brooks T. Brierley - Auburn, Reo, Franklin and Pierce-Arrow Versus Cadillac, Chrysler, Lincoln and Packard

Brooks T. Brierley - Magic Motors 1930