Sixty Fiver

Enjoy...

Artkansas 

That was cool.

Industry On Parade was one of my favorite shows as a kid.

rothenfield1

I’m not sure I’m enjoying it yet.

It sounds like a serious topic however.

Mos6502

Columbia tore down the factory this was filmed in a few years ago.


The buildings were over 100 years old at the time, a shame, but they had been unused for decades.

At the time this movie was made Columbia was owned by Torrington and their bikes were considered equal to if not superior to Schwinn's during this era.

In 1967 MTD bought Columbia, in one decade they had run quality into the ground, and by 1987 Columbia was bankrupt. It was a perfect example of how to destroy a 100 year old company. By 1967 Columbia was no longer at Schwinn level really, but by 1977 their bikes were just embarrassing. They made Huffy bikes look good. Thin paint, sloppy brazing, cheap thin chrome - decals applied skewed. There was just 0 indication of any pride in the product.

The office buildings and some of the post WWII factory buildings are still in use to produce folding chairs and picnic tables...

Gravity Aided

I remember a show on "How it's Made " that showed a production lne for CCM's. Still rather have a Schwinn than a Columbia, Tho Columbia made a nice 10 speed in the 60's and 70's as I recall . I had one before I started work, and got a lot better bike out of it . Car just didn't occurr to me until Community College . By the late 70's, Columbias were a bad lot . If they'd cut any more corners, they would have been round.

miamijim

I'll remember this vid the next time someone asks if it's OK to cold set a frame.

sced

Love the movie, but I can't imagine sitting there truing wheels for 8 hours a day.

mkeller234

I had the exact same thought. That would be one heck of a mind numbing job!

Great video, thanks for sharing it. I liked watching the women add stripes to the fenders and frames.

tcs

And you don't have to:

https://youtu.be/7yF_S1L0X68

well biked

I have an aunt who, during about a twenty year period of her life many years ago, did just that. She worked at a bicycle manufacturing plant in the US (AMF), and when I saw all those work stations in the video where the ladies are lacing up wheels, I thought, wow, that's what she did. She did not like that job at all, but it helped pay their bills. She was a naturally athletic lady who, later on, when she and my uncle were more affluent, became an accomplished tennis player. She had the strongest hands, by far, of any lady I've ever known. She always said it was because of the wheelbuilding job at the bicycle plant.

tcs

My mom worked in a factory like that in the early 1950s. She said it was way better than picking cotton by hand.

Sixty Fiver

Someone has to build your wheels for you... and like someone said, it helped pay the bills and unemployment was a third of what is is today.

well biked

I'm sure that's true. The aunt I mentioned never lived on a farm, I don't think, but my mom did and picked cotton as a kid. It was not a fond memory for her, either.

RubberLegs

Mass produced bikes in the USA? NOT that "Happening" today. The EPA, OSHA and UAW have made it economically impossible to turn a profit. In the "Entry Level" industry, are there ANY bikes still MASS PRODUCED in the US? I guess CANNONDALE and TREK, not exactly entry level. But their lower end bikes are NOT make in the US.

RubberLegs

Those couldn't have been Columbias, I didn't see the stage that they added "LOTS OF RUST" to them!!! (that is the kind I usually see!)

Kobe 

Amazing that they made the entire bike at the one factory.

well biked

No Cannondales at all any more, maybe the highest end carbon fiber Treks.

mparker326

Really? What exactly did they do to destroy the bicycle industry?

Oregon Southpaw

Yeah that proclamation caught me too but I decided I wanted to stay Ron Paul flame-war-free

Mos6502

Actually Huffy and AMF were finally done in by a decision not to impose tariffs on Chinese made bicycles I think.

https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-56830292.html

Even if OSHA, and the UAW didn't exist, you'd have a hard time competing against products made by factories that don't need to operate within the realms of capitalism.

Schwinn was done in by a failure to innovate, Columbia was done in by exceptionally stupid management decisions, Ross actually farmed out manufacture of some of their bikes to Taiwan but I think they were already dead in the water by 1996 when AMF and Huffy were served their death warrant.

Columbia made the mistake of trying to compete on price while simultaneously trying to cash in on the company name. It didn't work. They drove the quality further and further to the bottom, and they ended up competing with Huffy, AMF, Murray - the bottom of the market was already saturated. It was an incredibly stupid move and it also ruined whatever prestige the brand name held.

Conversely Ross started at the bottom and saw their best chance was to try and move up. They ended up making some of the better American bicycles during the late 70s and 1980s. They also grabbed onto mountain bikes and got that market while Schwinn was still twiddling their thumbs.

Fenway

The UAW killed Schwinn with inflexible work rules and the mind numbingly stupid assertion that even the unskilled workers in the bicycle factories should be paid as much as the skilled labor in auto factories. The union didn't care that it was going to put its membership out of work by bankrupting the memberships' employer.

For the most part the UAW does what is good for the union bureaucracy and doesn't give a damn about the membership anymore. Compulsory workplace dues have made the leadership almost completely isolated from the members. They are scared to death of right to work and freedom of association laws which would have a large part of the resentful membership declaring "thanks for nothing!" and cutting off coerced payment of dues. Monopolies never work in the consumer's favor and when the leadership figured out that membership was a monopolized product required for employment, the consumer i.e. the employees started to get screwed by the very organization originally created to help them.

Even with cutthroat competition from Asia I think Schwinn would have survived if the bulk of its manufacturing had been in right to work states with low costs of living to make the compensation to employees and costs of operation competitive. Automakers have been able to pull this off and I really do think Schwinn could have if they hadn't remained so heavily invested in Chicago until it was too late.

Velognome 

Life seems so much happier in black & white with an orchestral sound track...............aaahhhhh another Stag please!

3alarmer 

If a moderator will move this to P+R, I will give it
the dismantling it so richly deserves.

Meanwhile, take a look at:

Mos6502

I don't think we need to move the thread - if we're discussing the history of bicycle manufacturers I think we're on topic for this forum.

I don't think the UAW killed Schwinn, they didn't help them certainly, but Schwinn had bigger internal problems than the UAW.

They invested in the costly electro-forging equipment right when Americans were getting turned on to light weight bikes, and lugged frames were becoming perceived as a mark of quality for instance.

While they caught on to dérailleurs and ten speeds early on, they were slow to respond to BMX and mountain biking. I think Schwinn was a little "out of touch" with what the cycling public wanted, and they weren't responding quick enough to new trends. A day late and dollar short.

miamijim

When I worked in a shop thats all I did for weeks on end during the winter.