Automotive Machine Shop

Dodge Brothers Facts
The Dodge brothers, John Francis (1864-1920) and Horace Elgin (1868-1920), were among the earliest and most successful automotive pioneers of the twentieth century.
Failures and Successes
The Dominion Typography Company was not suited to the manufacture of bicycles and soon collapsed. The Dodges saw the failure of their employer as a chance for them to go into business for themselves. "In 1896, when the failing Canadian typography company was listed for sale," writes Pitrone in Tangled Web: Legacy of Auto Pioneer John F. Dodge, "the Dodges took every dollar they could drain from their family budgets to lease the company's building and fixtures." "Obtaining the lease, the brothers started operating their own business, but it survived only a short time," the critic continues. Instead of trying to maintain the company through a failure, John and Horace sold the business to another Canadian firm, which manufactured bicycles using the Dodge patent. "The brothers," say Pitrone and Elwart, "… had expected to receive substantial royalty payments from the buyer for their ball-bearing bicycle invention. But the company, beginning to fail, had reneged on royalty payments. As soon as the Canadian company made plans to dispose of its assets, the Dodge brothers canceled their claims against the firm in exchange for their pick of the machinery in the Windsor plant."
This second-hand Canadian machinery formed the nucleus of the Dodge Brothers Machine Shop which John and Horace founded in the Boydell Building in Detroit in 1902. Their earliest contracts came from stove manufacturers, but soon they contracted with Ransom Olds, producer of the single-cylinder Oldsmobile, to build transmissions. The Dodges' success in creating high-quality parts that Olds used to assemble his cars brought the brothers both profits-which they invested in their business-and fame. Soon they were approached by budding auto designer Henry Ford. "Near the end of 1902," write Pitrone and Elwart, "the Dodge brothers produced in their machine shop the automobile that was to be the basis for Ford's successful business." Early in 1903, John and Horace abandoned their contract with Olds in favor of investing in the Ford prototype Model A automobile, a car that was produced almost entirely in their own shop.
Although the Dodges delivered the nearly completed cars they had contracted for on schedule, Ford and his two partners, the coal dealers Alexander Malcomson and James Couzens, found themselves unable to pay. Instead, the partners offered the brothers fifty shares of stock in the newly formed Ford Motor Company apiece. "By October of that first year," state Pitrone and Elwart, "Ford expanded the assembly plant, and the Dodges, who contracted to deliver 755 more chassis in the first five months of 1904, made a personal profit of more than $75,000." "By June 1904, less than one year from the date the company had begun selling its first cars," the writers explain, "dividends of 98 percent were paid to its stockholders. The Dodges received $9,800 in dividends on their original $10,000 investment in stock." "In June 1905, the Dodges received another $10,000 in dividends, plus an additional $10,000 the following month-dividends which were only a faint indication of the millions of dollars they would receive within the next several years," they conclude. More to come with next blog: