MTFCA Forum

My 12 touring has a brass plate stating manufactured by the American Trimming Co. on it. I have never seen one before and anyone I talk to has never seen one before ether. I know they painted, trimmed and made body's for several car companies. I believe they went out of business or changed direction around 1923. So how common are the plate.
thanks for any info you may have.
Joe

Sorry it says American Auto trimming Co. I left out auto by mistake in the first post and do not know how to correct it.

Joe,
Would you please post a picture of it?
Do you have the original data plate on the dash, too?

: ^ )

Things were moving really fast for the Ford Motor company in those years. Sales were swift, production was doing all it could to fill the orders. Henry was setting up the moving assembly line so they could build cars even faster. Ford was producing and selling more cars than any company in the world ever had before! Nearly all the parts were being built by outside suppliers, most parts being supplied by two or three companies at any given time.
The bodies were the single largest part of every car. They required more man-hours for each one than anything else except the entire engine unit itself.
Ford was ordering bodies a month or more ahead of need, from three or four different body suppliers locally. Most of the local carriage trade was working 24 hours a day trying to keep up with Ford's demands. Even at that, the body makers couldn't quite keep up. The area had been a center for the carriage trade before the automobile became common. Numerous smaller shops were called in. Several of them became specialists in upholstery or painting, or both.
Everybody was scrambling. Even Ford had men in their new factory finishing bodies. The various body manufacturers were sending half finished bodies to the new "finishing and trimming shops" springing up around town. Ford themselves was ordering bodies "in the white" which meant structurally the body was done, however painting and/or upholstery had not yet been done. Sometimes the body suppliers, sometimes Ford themselves contracted for these "finishing shops" to finish the bodies.
Some early factory tags attached to finished cars have a place on the tag to note both the body builder and the finisher if there was one.

Tags like you describe are rare. I have read of a few of them on these forums over the years. Certainly, literally thousands of bodies during the brass era were finished in those "finishing shops". Many of them, maybe even most of them, didn't get a brass tag announcing that detail of its manufacture. And of course most such cars didn't survive long enough for us to see them today.
There are others around, regardless, you have something special!

One more reason why the brass era cars that survived intact are so intriguing. Strictly speaking, "trimming" refers only to upholstery and tops. I wonder if the American Auto Trimming Co. built the body, or if they placed the tag to claim their pride in workmanship for the upholstery ? In any case, that tag is a treasure ! I hope you will post a picture of it.

Joe, are there any stamped marks on body members that might pertain to the maker ? Is there a listing of suppliers of bodies in that period ?

My reasoning why the tags are so scarce is it was placed over the top material so when a new top was put on the brass tag was gone.

Joe,
Where is the tag attached?
Since you are in Ontario and the American AutoTrimming Co tag is marked Walkerville, is the car Canadian? If so, it would have a Wm Gray & Sonds body on it. That is the body number? Look on the seat frame in front of the gas tank cover, and in the underside of a back door.

Also, would you please post a picture of the body id tag?

: ^ )

Keith

It would seem to indicate the top was manufactured by American Auto Trimming Co. Joe is right, if a top was re-covered, the tag would be discarded. Tops were probably more often just discarded when they came to the end of their useful life, and an aging car put to another use - made into a truck or tractor or given to the kids.

I hope you follow up with this, perhaps with more pictures of your car. It's so rare to see original condition cars, or even parts of them. Thanks for posting the tag !

Cool. Yup, it's Ford factory body finishing company for 1912. (1909-1912 and later).

The link below has a photo of a ford factory winged ford paper body tag showing American was one of the ford body "finishers" as opposed to being one of the ford body manufacturers.

It's a very interesting long story, one that would go well in the Vintage Ford.

http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/a/america ... o_trim.htm

Quoted from the Link: "The firm's first customers included Ford and Studebaker and Michigan factory inspections between 1909 and 1912 reveal the size of its operations in its early days. Four different facilities were listed in the report, one for auto body finishing, one for auto top manufacturing, and two for auto trimming. What follows is the contents of reports included in 'Annual Report #31, State of Michigan Dept. of Labor', which was published in 1914:

"Plant #1 Inspection on Aug 11, 1909 product: auto trimming – 128 male employees, 33 female employees, total 161

"Plant #2 Inspection on Aug 12, 1912 product: auto body finishing – 297 male employees, 27 female employees, total 324 (1 under age 16)

"Plant #3 Inspection on Nov 14, 1909 product: auto trimming – 53 male employees, 0 female employees, total 53

"Plant #4 Inspection on Aug 1, 1909 product: auto tops – 23 male employees, 20 female employees, total 43"

Joe

if the rest of the car is remotely as nice as the perishable top appears to be, I hope there is no restoration slated for its future

that's really neat

The top was replaced years ago and a very poor job at that. The tag it had to be removed when a new top was put on but it was reinstalled thankfully.

Body tags showing American:

This photo needs to be here.
Note at least three such tags on this very new 1913 touring car. It may be that the car was shipped in knockdown form and the various tags were so that the designated car, top and wheels were put back together? I really do not know that? However it would maybe explain why the car has at least three such tags on it.

Usually, once a new car was delivered, the tags were removed and thrown away. However, some people would have kept them in the file with the car's other paperwork. And some people would have tossed the tags under the seat. I have seen a very few of these tags at swap meets, but never had one myself.

What a great photo ! They don't come any newer than that ! What about the metal tag on the dash below the windshield ?

I wonder if, when Henry got the assembly line going and started making all of the parts and started doing the work, in-house, how many parts suppliers and service providers went out of business. It is almost a certainty that Ford, once the big change-over occurred, went on a head hunting campaign, approaching the qualified employees of these companies to come over and work for him making Model T’s, especially the carriage workers experienced in making bodies, wood framing, upholstery and painting, since that took up the most time. In January, 1914, Ford began paying his workers a wage of $5.00/per day (maybe more if the worker was experience in a specialized craft) which was hard to ignore back then when wages were a fraction of that, but he worked their a...’s off. Jim Patrick