Talk:Oshkosh Truck

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oshkosh Truck is part of WikiProject Fire Service, which is building a comprehensive and detailed guide to the fire service around the world. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, where you can join the project.

This article is part of WikiProject Wisconsin, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Wisconsin.

[edit] Needs Image

Sorely needs an image :( --Wulf 04:29, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Early History

By: Robert Denes

The company was founded by the Mosling Family in Oshkosh, WI before World War I. Originally manufacturing rear axles for trucks, the company became prosperous during the war due to the government contracts, and it began assembling trucks also.

The real expansion of the operation came about when John Mosling took the firm over from his father and expanded into other types of vehicles, besides army trucks. After WW. II the products were concrete carriers, snow-plow trucks for both the Air Force and for commercial airports, and very heavy "desert trucks" for oil field explorations in the Arab peninsula. By the 1960-s Oshkosh was a well established specialty truck manufacturer/assembler with about $20 million sales annually. It's distribution network was the world-wide Caterpillar dealer organization, after Mosling committed to use Caterpillar Diesel engines in the trucks. John Mosling, working with advisors from Earnst & Young, also undertook a major expansion into new markets in the 1970-s, when the nation's airports suddenly needed fire/rescue equipments. He, building on the experience of Oshkosh with similar Air Force fire/crash trucks, aggressively marketed fire/rescue vehicles to the US airports.

Around 1970, John Mosling established a cooperation with South Africa's largest Caterpillar dealer, the Barlows Corporation, to build truck assembly facilities there. The operation began in Paarl, near Cape Town, in small temporary facilities, where the rugged Oshkosh trucks were assembled from kits shipped from Oshkosh. Soon, a cab-over truck was also developped by Oshkosh engineering specifically for the South African market. After a decade, the operation became wholly owned by the Barlows organization.

Meantime the US Army, rebuilding its armored vehicle systems, needed new type of trucks to haul its tanks around. Oshkosh, through a long bidding process succesfully obtained a long contract for the Heavy Equipment Transporter. Thus, Oshkosh's success in those times were tied closely with supplying the military with the equipment they needed, even remanufacturing for them their used trucks.

John's sons entered the business in the 1970-s and brought in a new, professional management for the company, greatly expanding its markets. The company went public and its share values just kept multiplying. Aquisition followed aquisition, and now Oshkosh Truck is an over 3 billion dollar public company company, listed as OSK.