AH Yocum & Company

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AH Yocum & Company (also AH Yokum & Company) was a small American automobile manufacturer in Reading , Pennsylvania that sold its vehicles under the Speed-Well brand.

history

Arthur H. Yocum (also Yokum) and his father, George Y. Yocum, began in 1904 in its engineering plant in Reading with the construction of gasoline-powered car engines and small cars of the type runabout . In 1907 they entered into a partnership with Isaac Hollenbach and JS Hornberger and formed H. Yocum & Co. from their company. The company was initially still of a modest size and employed only about 20 workers. It mainly dealt with the construction of the engines and the finishing of the Speed-Well vehicles, while several suppliers supplied various components: Parish Manufacturing Company (steel frame), Biehl's Carriage Works (metal body parts), Keystone's Wagon Works (aluminum, Steel and wood parts of the bodywork) and American Die & Tool Works ( gearbox ).

Excessive expansion plans caused the company to end a few years later. In the late summer of 1909, Yocum announced the relocation of production from Reading to a new plant in Oakland, Pennsylvania, where two-, three- and four-cylinder passenger cars with valve- less engines ( valve engines ) from 10 to 40 hp would be built. In doing so, the company took over and operations were soon shut down.

The Eureka Motor Buggy Company in Beavertown (Pennsylvania) and its successor, the Kearns Motor Buggy Company , used only Speed-Well two- and three-cylinder engines from 1907 to 1912, which were initially available with air cooling and later with water cooling on request .

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Morton Luther Montgomery: Historical and biographical annals of Berks County, Pennsylvania, embracing a concise history of the county and a genealogical and biographical record of representative families. (P. 47)
  2. ↑ It is unclear which of the various places called Oakland, Pennsylvania, it was.
  3. ↑ Old Cars Report
  4. ↑ american-automobiles.com: Eureka
  5. ↑ american-automobiles.com: Kearns
  6. ↑ Kimes: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942 (1996), pp. 797-798.

literature

  • Beverly Rae Kimes (Editor), Henry Austin Clark Jr.: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805–1942. 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola WI 1996, ISBN 978-0-87341-428-9 ISBN 0-87341-428-4 . (English)
  • George Nick Georgano (Ed.): Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars, 1885 to the Present ; Dutton Press, New York, 2nd edition (hardcover) 1973, ISBN 0-525-08351-0 (English)
  • GN Georgano (Ed.), G. Marshall Naul: Complete Encyclopedia of Commercial Vehicles ; MBI Motor Books International, Osceola WI (1979); ISBN 0-87341-024-6 ; Hardcover
  • Beverly Rae Kimes: Pioneers, Engineers, and Scoundrels: The Dawn of the Automobile in America. Published by SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Permissions, Warrendale PA 2005, ISBN 0-7680-1431-X . (English)

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