The World Today

The World Today
Earth in 2013

Friday, September 10, 2010

VOC Auto

The VOC was slow to catch on to the automotive industry. Though the railroad could not deliver goods directly to all points, the company believed that it more than made up for it volume and cost efficiency. The automobile during the last decade of the 19th Century and first of the 20th, the automobile was seen as a rich man’s toy. Not until Henry Ford perfected his assembly line approach, which lowered the cost to make automobiles marketable, did the VOC take notice. The VOC purchased a number of ford trucks to augment VOC Rail. These trucks worked for teamsters under VOC contract to deliver goods from the rail depot directly to the store.

It was not until 1924, when the company established VOC Auto and built its first plant in Brazil. VOC Auto was never intended to mass produce motorcars for the public. Instead, it produced thousands of trucks, mostly for company use but also sold to other trucking companies as well as freelance teamsters. There was some debate in the Board about going into the mass consumer market, but by the middle of the 1920s, the market was becoming saturated. The automobile industry, with its reliable and long-lasting vehicles, was a bubble just waiting to burst.

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