Wagons to the world: the foreign shipments

1880s — 1919

Orders from all points of the globe: The foreign wagon trade is documented at the level of single shipments, which is how the record keeps it honest. In July 1885 the Western Rural and American Stockman put the question directly to the firm — "Doubtless you make some shipments abroad?" — and printed the answer: "Yes; we have a nice trade in several foreign countries, and it is a common thing for us to receive orders from all points of the globe. Within the week we have shipped one carriage to Monte-video, Uruguay, South America; and another to Bankok, Siam, Asia. Our wagons, of course, go everywhere. Dr. Ridgeway mentioning that in his travels he even saw a Studebaker wagon in Palestine, just south of Nazareth." Erskine's history, summing the wagon era, places the firm's handiwork "on the plains and prairies, on the highest traversal points of the great rocky chain, on farms, plantations and ranches, in Mexico, South America, and even Europe." Australia took the wagons from the 1880s: the marque record there is plain that horse-drawn wagons and carts were imported from the South Bend factory beginning in that decade, and that automobiles followed the same road in the next century. By 1918 Erskine could address his company history, in its own preface, to "the 12,000 dealers in its products living throughout the world" — the company's count of its own selling network, printed here as the company's. The wagon works' regular manufacture of horse-drawn vehicles ended in 1919; the foreign reach it built passed to the automobile trade, and to the Canadian door of the next entries.

Sources:

1. Western Rural and American Stockman, 4 July 1885, interview with the Studebaker Brothers' management, preserved in the Chicago house record — the shipments to Montevideo and Bangkok within the week, and the wagon seen in Palestine south of Nazareth.
2. Albert Russel Erskine, History of the Studebaker Corporation (1918) — Studebaker vehicles in Mexico, South America and Europe, and the preface's 12,000 dealers "living throughout the world," carried as the company's own count.
3. The Australian marque record (Studebaker in Australia, factory and club histories) — wagons and carts imported from the South Bend factory from the 1880s, automobiles following.