Talk:Hendrickson Holdings

2004 article
The 2004 article is only available online in a Google cache; see here. Z iggurat 21:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

RE: Deletion
The title should be changed to Hendrickson Int'l Corp. per the disambiguation rules pertaining to company entries as other notable companies named Hendrickson exist with no (formal) relationship to this one; e.g., Hendrickson Salad Dressings and Hendrickson Publishing.

Regarding the relevance of this company, there are several points in favor of its relevance:

1) Financial size. Known to be in excess of $1 billion. Possibly 2X to 5X that size, but difficult to estimate because of international operations and company's status as subsidiary of privately held holding company (The Boler Company).

2) Prior to acquisition by Boler in 1978, company was responsible for many engineering "firsts"; the Tandem Axle is merely the most well-known example. The company was well-known within industry circles for undertaking specialized-vehicle development projects requiring extensive R&D as the specific challenges being addressed had not previously been considered. E.g., development of oversized heavy equipment vehicles for the Alaskan pipeline project, aircraft-deployable tarmac creation trucks for rapid landing-zone creation during Vietnam War (developed from modified fire truck), first airplane pushback tractor, etc. These vehicles would often be developed under contract for the customer who would then have them manufactured in quantity by another vendor (e.g., Harvester); conversely, a substantial portion of this business would come in under contract from Harvester, who would then produce production vehicles based on the Hendrickson prototypes (i.e., Harvester essentially outsourced either some or all of its specialized vehicle development operations to Hendrickson -- the companies had an intimate working relationship for several decades, roughly the '20s through the '70s). This aside, without question many specialized trade vehicles (or features thereof, such as compartmentalized water storage on fire trucks so as to mitigate turn-over accidents) that we take for granted today are the direct result of this company's contributions during the years 1913 through 1978.

3) Hendrickson forced out of business 144 other regional manufacturers and thus had a stronghold on every niche it chose to occupy; its ability to accomplish this was probably made possible through its close ties to the Harvester company. In this respect, the nominal independence of Hendrickson from Harvester may have allowed Harvester to accomplish competitive objectives that would probably have otherwise been unachievable for both political and regulatory reasons.

A truck company in WikiProject Dance?
Okay, why is a truck manufacturing company given a tag from WikiProject:Dance? DanTD (talk) 02:48, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Obviously it's because dodging Hendrickson trucks on the highway is kind of like dancing, but with lots of fast-moving steel. (deleted). CDC (talk) 05:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)