Garfield Wood

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Garfield ‘Gar’ Arthur Wood (1880 – 1971) was an American inventor, entrepreneur, motorboat builder and racer who held the world water speed record on several occasions. He was the first man to travel over 100 miles per hour on water.

His father was a ferryboat operator on Lake Osakis, and Gar worked on boats from an early age. In 1911 at 31, he invented a hydraulic lift for unloading coal from rail trucks. He established the Wood Hoist Co. in Detroit and soon became a successful businessman. Later he changed the company name to Garwood Industries, which built racing boats, but also capitalized on experience with coal unloaders to successfully produce and market GarWood truck bodies.

In 1916, Wood purchased a motorboat for racing called Miss Detroit. Wood set a new world record speed for a boat, (74.870 mph) in 1920 on the Detroit River, using a new boat called Miss America. In the following twelve years, Wood built four more Miss America's and broke the record five times, raising it to 124.860 mph (200.9 kmp) in 1932 on the St. Clair River.

In 1921, Wood raced one of his boats against the Havana Special train, 1250 miles up the Atlantic coast from Miami to New York City. Wood made the trip in 47 hours and 23 minutes and beat the train by 12 minutes. In 1925, he raced the Twentieth Century Limited train up the Hudson River between Albany and New York and won by 22 minutes.

As well as being a record breaker and showman, Wood won five straight powerboat Gold Cup races between 1917 and 1921. Wood also won the prestigious Harmsworth Trophy nine time (1920-21, 1926, 1928-30, 1932-33).

In 1931, he lost the Trophy in dramatic circumstances to his younger brother George. The race was held on the Detroit River and was billed as a match race between the Wood brothers and English racing driver and record-breaker Kaye Don, driving Miss England II. Before an estimated crowd of over a million spectators (one of the largest crowds for a sporting event ever), Don won the first heat of the race. In the second heat, Wood was leading Don, when Miss England II suddenly flipped over rounding one of the turns, fortunately without injury to Don and his co-driver. Gar Wood finished the race first, but both he and Don were disqualified because they had jumped the starter's gun by seven seconds. George Wood completed the final race to win the trophy.

Wood retired from racing in 1933 to concentrate on his businesses. Garwood Industries continued to build wooden racing boats until 1947. Garwood Industries also built truck bodies and winches that were used extensively by truck manufacturers such as International Harvester, and were an OEM supplier to both the civilian and military market. Many trucks built during World War II came equipped with Garwood bodies and winches. One of the biggest contributions by Garwood Industries was the development of the now-ubiquitous garbage truck, which was originally built and sold under the name Garwood Load Packer.

In the 1950s, he acquired Fisher Island (located in South Florida's Biscayne Bay and was the last of a series of millionaires to occupy it as a one-family island retreat, eventually selling it to a development group in 1963. He died in Miami at the age of 90 in 1971, days before the 50th anniversary of his first Harmsworth win. Upon Wood's death, George Van of The Detroit News wrote: “To the public, he was Tom Swift, Jules Verne, Frank Merriwell with a little bit of Horatio Alger thrown in.”