The Kelly-Springfield Motor Truck Company was an American manufacturer of trucks and later buses based in

Springfield, Ohio Springfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County, Ohio, Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River (Ohio), Mad River, Buck Creek, and Beaver Creek, approxim ...

. It was established in 1910 by Edwin S. Kelly, who had previously co-founded the Kelly-Springfield Tire Company.

History

Edwin Kelly purchased the Frayer Miller Auto Company in 1909 (the tire company having been sold in 1895) and renamed it the Kelly Motor Truck Company; in 1912 it became the Kelly-Springfield Motor Truck Company. The company initially produced trucks with air-cooled Frayer engines, but in 1912 it introduced three new models using water-cooled engines of its own design: the one-and-a-half-ton K-31, the two-and-a-half ton K-35 and the three-and-a-half ton K-40. Later, it brought out the five-ton K-50. (See the external links section for specifications of all four models.) The business expanded across the United States, including a headquarters in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, branches in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

(1917–1926) and

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

'' Automotive Industries'' magazine and a distributorship in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. In April 1914, the Pacific Motor Coach Co. of Los Angeles placed an order for 105 of its trucks, possibly "the largest single order ever placed for motor trucks" to that time. According to ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Trucks and Commercial Vehicles'' by Albert Mroz, the company produced 301 of the 9,364

Liberty truck The Class-B Standardized Military Truck or "Liberty Truck" was a heavy-duty truck produced by the United States Army during World War I. It was designed by the Quartermaster Corps with help from the Society of Automotive Engineers in 1917 in an e ...

s supplied to the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

for

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Another source states that the company only managed to produce 16 before the war ended and the contract was canceled. It also supplied K-40s to the

Canadian Army The Canadian Army (french: Armée canadienne) is the command responsible for the operational readiness of the conventional ground forces of the Canadian Armed Forces. It maintains regular forces units at bases across Canada, and is also respo ...

and K-35s to the

French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...

. However, it seems they were unable to stand up to the rigors of military use. (Part of a K-35 probably used by the French Army survives.) A distributor stated that the company had fulfilled an order for 5900 trucks for the

United States Post Office The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U. ...

in September 1918 and had expanded its capacity 600% (from August 1914 to February 1919). In 1920, when it was taken over by Hare's Motors, it had a large plant in

, and produced trucks ranging in size from one and a half to six and a half tons. On February 14, 1927, Congress approved bill H.R. 1105 "for relief of Kelly Springfield Motor Truck Company of California", but the company eventually ended operations later the same year. That year, the Kelly-Springfield Truck & Bus Corporation advertised that it wished to sell its Springfield manufacturing plant. The

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

possesses some material about the company.

Gallery

References

{{reflist

External links

* Specifications and images of Kelly-Springfield truck models in the Crittenden Automotive Library: *
K-31
*
K-35
*
K-40
*
K-50

Photo of a "Kelly-Springfield bus, Pacific Motor Coach Co."
in the Detroit Public Library Digital Collections American companies established in 1910 American companies disestablished in 1927 Truck manufacturers of the United States