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Wentworth & Irwin – Portland, Oregon - stand-up milk
delivery trucks on GMC chassis in late 1930s. (Wentworth-Irwin also known as
Columbia Body & Equipment Co. originally Columbia Carriage Works) --- In
1903, when George Wentworth and Charles Irwin opened the Wentworth and Irwin
Company on West Burnside in Portland, the company specialized in the
production of custom wagons. The wagons were true Oregon products – the hot,
recently formed metal wheel covers for Wentworth’s wagons were dipped in the
Willamette River to cool them
down for assembly. Known as Columbia Carriage Works,
the firm was the first transportation-oriented business in Oregon and, after
focusing on wagons for the first two decades of its existence, it shifted
gears in 1923, when George Wentworth purchased the Nash Automobile Distributorship
for the five western states. Ever since, the Wentworth family has been among
the prime movers of the auto sales industry in the Pacific Northwest.
As the 1920s roared by, George Wentworth watched the
business at the wagon works drop while activity on automobile lots grew
rapidly. The company saw the auto industry’s potential early on and, in the
late 1920s, created Columbia Body & Equipment to meet the new demand. At the
time, all commercial automobile bodies were custom-built, and the company
did a booming business in specialty vehicles including dump trucks, log
trucks and fire trucks. Among the company’s many innovations was the first
use of brakes on logging truck trailers, which previously relied on the
tractor’s brakes to slow down.
George Wentworth died in 1932, leaving the company to
his son, Charles, who took another step in Wentworth’s expansion in 1937
when he purchased a GMC truck distributorship. – Still exists as new car
dealers in Oregon and as
xxxxxxx
Wentworth & Irwin built an unusual 1933-34 Ford tractor and semi-trailer bus
who's tractor was remote-controlled from the trailer by the driver. The
engineering for the remote-control system must have been a nightmare as all
the control had to be either hydraulically or mechanically connected in some
way.
(picture pp63 Woods - American Buses)
Wentworth & Irwin built some bi-level buses in the mid 1930s that were used
to transport both passengers and cargo. The rear passengers sat over a large
cargo hold located over the rear half of the bus.
(picture pp66 Woods - American Buses)
They also built some mid-thirties airport limousines on customer-designated
chassis. One rare example was built using a stretched 1935 DeSoto Airflow
chassis for the Mount Hood Stages, one of the very few Airflows known to
have been modified for commercial use.
(picture pp67 Woods - American Buses)
During WWII they built a number of War Worker trailers, semi-trailer buses
pulled by a tractor cab and chassis. Shult and Fruehauf also built similar trailers
for Detroit-area businesses engaged in war work. Some were converted from
existing new car carriers, others were built from scratch.
(pp90-91 - Woods - American Buses)
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