MTFCA Forum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYCw1aThbE8

Some good photos in here.

Very thoughtful. I agree with most of it.
Keep in mind, "Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile until 1908"
I was clued in but a classmate in the 60s.

Putting things in perspective.
No doubt Henry would have made & sold the crates to his part suppliers.
What parts, other than bodies, did suppliers make that required shipment to a ford plant in a crate. Ford made about everything
How many parts per crate might be shipped in a day for assembly. Or how many crates would arrive as a result.
How many crates would it take to build floorboards for 9,000 to 10,000 Model T's a day
Henry would have had to have employees disassemble crates for the wood - not efficient use of labor - and then work the wood.
Was it a practice at all factories?
Likely the old crates found their way to the Kingsford Plant

Maybe they were used to make firewalls instead of floorboards.

The photo of the firewalls being put together in pieces is interesting. I have a 1919 Roadster and a 21 Touring with the wooden firewalls. I bought the vendors reproduction firewalls when I restored them. The originals were long gone by the time I acquired the remains of these T’s. I bought a partial original firewall that had the original drip edge on it to get the metal drip edge.
I didn’t know at the time that the original firewalls were put together with dovetailed pieces when I got the repo firewalls.
Were the earlier wood firewalls made that way too? Maybe a good grade of single plywood wasnt avaliable at the time for the 17-21 cars? Don’t know about the earlier T’s. But to me building the wood firewalls that way wasn’t cost effective but what do I know.

Frank,
Everything that Ford bought from a primary vendor had at least a secondary vendor and often more.
Coils, coil boxes, headlamps side lamps, headlights, carburetors, radiators, fasteners, hardware, etc...

There were undoubtedly lots of crates, however...

The story about crates with inspection holes is a great story. If a lie is told enough times, people tend to believe it.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."

The myth that Ford used suppliers crates for floorboards has been around since the 1920’s and still persists.

Once a tale is believed as fact, the truth is lost.

A couple of very early photo's of lumber storage From Ford. Scraps and all.

With all the excess wood Ford got from crates from supplies being brought in there was without a doubt stacks and piles of it over time. The pictures that were posted of it being stored is before the so called black era when production was really going strong and wood crating really piling up!

I never believed the floorboard urban legend; You simply cannot make a new product from used parts.

I'm a bit like Henry in keeping a pile of scrap under cover taking up valuable floor space

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