SERVICE CASTER AND TRUCK COMPANY - Historical Albion Michigan

One of Albion’s significant employers during the mid-20th century was the Service Caster and Truck Company. It was located on N. Albion Street where Union Steel Products is now located, just south of the main railroad tracks. The company moved here from Kansas City, Missouri, in September 1923. The firm manufactured industrial casters, floor trucks and trailers, industrial lifts, fork lift trucks and electric four-post lifters.

Many Albion residents have memories of Service Caster and the employment role it served locally for many years. Unfortunately, there were labor disputes in the early 1950s, and the company was sold to the Colson Corporation of Elyria, Ohio, in April, 1954, and renamed the Colson Service Company. In September the company announced that it was closing. Equipment was transferred to the Elyria plant, and their Somerville Massachusetts plant continued to produce casters there.

The shutdown of Service Caster in Albion was completed in November 1954, and 90 employees were out of work. Only two years earlier, there had been 282 persons employed there before the large layoffs began in preparation to the closing.

From our Historical Notebook this week we present a photograph circa 1940 which apparently shows some union officials and/or workers at the time. Front row, left to right: Gilbert Sharrar, Robert Woods, Ken Matson, Helen Ellerby, Harley Guy. Top row: Frank Radtke, Gerald Davis, Carl Franklin, Don Stockton, unidentified, John Marzic, Ray Stahl.

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