Amesbury Group Revenue and Competitors

One of the first business organizations in the east to engage in the manufacture of aluminum auto bodies was formed in Amesbury in 1907. It was called the Amesbury Metal Body Co., and was composed of James H. Walker, John Foster, Fred England and J. Albert Davis, all of whom were once members of various body concerns of the town, but because of the invention of metal covered bodies, severed their relations and founded one of the most prosperous of all local metal shops. Their establishment was, like many others, located in Babcock’s No.5 plant on Chestnut Street where they employed some forty metal workers. Because of their building metal fenders and engine heads for various auto chassis they completed only eight finished motor car bodies per week. During their six year’s stay in Amesbury before going to Detroit in 1913, more than one-half of their work was for the Stevens-Duryea Motor Co. but they also built bodies for the Studebaker, Packard, and Alco automobiles. This firm was the second in the country to press-out metal engine hoods and door panels but very little of this work was done in Amesbury. Gray and Davis, of Amesbury, the largest maker of carriage lanterns in the US, quickly used these lanterns for automobiles. They moved to Boston in 1913. The cost of transporting bodies from Amesbury to Detroit was the leading factor for the demise of the Amesbury body makers. Except Pontiac, Amesbury factories made bodies for each of the companies that made up General Motors. In 1917, General Motors bought Fisher Body which was making bodies in Detroit. Until then, Fisher Body was also making bodies for other automobile companies. With this purchase, they became the sole manfacturer for General Motors. General Motors had also purchased the Fleetwood company that supplied bodies for the high-end trade. Fleetwood began making bodies for Cadillac. By this time, Fisher Body was the largest maker of automobile bodies. It is commonly reported that the depression ended the building of bodies in Amesbury, but by the time of the depression, body making was for all practicable purposes finished. Lozier Automobile Co, founded by Abraham Lozier, Plattsburg, NY, was the maker of the finest and the most expensive early cars produced in the United States. The 1910 model line featured cars priced between $4,600 and $7,750. The same year, a Cadillac could be had for about $1,600 and a Packard for $3,200. The average annual salary in America that year was approximately $750. They were in business from 1900-1915. Charles Franklin Pettingell established a machine shop in 1873 that specialized in building precision milling and wheel-wright machinery for the carriage industry. An early product of the firm was the C.F. Pettingell Rim and Felloe Rounding Machine which was used to manufacture carriage wheels. Pettingell’s shop was destroyed by the 1888 Amesbury Fire, but he rebuilt and continued to introduce new machinery. By the late 1890s C.F. Pettingell manufactured over 30 different machines, all earmarked for the carriage building industry. Products included tenoners, tilting arbor bevel saws (table saws) and irregular template dressers for wooden working plus friction cutters and rolling formers for sheet metal fabrication and their ever-popular rim and felloe rounding machines. In 1905, C.F. Pettingell retired and A.G. Bela purchased the firm reorganizing it as the Pettingell Machine Co. The firm’s most popular product was the Pettingell Automatic Hammer. Body panels that required several days of hand hammering could be finished in less than an hour using the labor saving device which was designed specifically for the automotive body business. The firm’s largest customer was the Fisher Body Corp. who used over 500 Pettingell power hammers in their factories. During the teens, twenties and thirties their specialized equipment could be found in every firm in the country that dealt with either manufacturing or repairing composite automobile bodies. At the beginning of the automobile industry, all bodies were made with ash or oak frames and then aluminum was applied over the frames, thus the name composite bodies. All early manufactured car bodies were manufactured this way. By 1930, all metal bodies were in production except Fisher Body which used the composite bodies until 1937. Amesbury has the unique distinction of being the first and only town of the country in which a rattan ( wicker) automobile body was ever manufactured. By the way, those little bumper cars, or the original name "Dodg'em", that you see and your children drive at all the amusement parks were first manufactured in Amesbury in 1919 by Carlton Witham of Merrimac.