Talk:Oshkosh Corporation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Trucks, a WikiProject which aims to improve all articles related to trucks.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale. [FAQ]
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating within truck articles.
This article has not been rated for quality and/or importance yet. Please rate the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

	Fire Portal Oshkosh Corporation is part of WikiProject Fire Service, which collaborates on fire service-related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
Assessment comments This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
Suggested article edit guidelines: To help us prioritise our workload, and in readiness for Wikipedia:1.0, we need to assess our articles for Quality. If this article is Unassessed, please assess it. See the Article Classification for instructions. If you disagree with a rating, you can change it or discuss it at Article Classification. After assessing this article's quality, please make sure it to add it to the Lists at Article Classification, following the grading scheme detailed there.

	Companies Portal This article is within the scope of Companies WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of companies. If you would like to participate please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating assessment scale.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Wisconsin, a WikiProject related to the U.S. state of Wisconsin. For more information, or to get involved, visit the project page. If you give this article a rating or change a previous rating, please leave a short summary in the comments to explain the rating and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
Low	This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.

[edit] Needs Image

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

The building pictures Royalbroil added help, and I found these military trucks elsewhere in Wikipedia. If someone cound find some examples of their commercial trucks (there's room for at least two more pics), that would be great. --Maxrandom777 06:25, 8 May 2007 (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.

[edit] Name Change

Oshkosh Truck is now Oshkosh Corporation. Does anyone know how to change the title of the article? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.130.42.42 (talk) 00:07, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

You have to be logged in to move, so I moved it. Thanks for the heads up! Royalbroil 02:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)