Corbitt

Overview

• HeadquartersHenderson¹

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Corbitt was an American automobile, truck, and farm equipment manufacturer. Richard J Corbitt founded a tobacco business in North Carolina in 1894. As a small tobacco dealer, he felt hopeless against the large tobacco industry and decided around 1899 to enter the manufacturing of horse-drawn carriage buggies. He succeeded in taking over the three competing local buggy builders. In 1905, Corbitt built his first automobile, which he called 'Motorbuggy', and which went into mass production in 1907. Financially, the first motor buggies were a failure. Starting in 1910, with the production of a 1.5-ton truck with chain drive, profits were made and the business expanded over the years to include light and heavy trucks, intracity buses, personnel vehicles for the U.S. Army, and farm tractors. Based in Henderson, North Carolina, for its entire history, it sold in 1952 to the United Industrial Syndicate, a New York City-based company which gradually liquidated Corbitt and shut it down. The last production vehicles came off the line in 1954, though a few vehicles were cobbled together from leftover parts in the years after that.²

Timeline

1. 1958Dissolved Dissolved¹
2. 1899Founded Founded¹

Links

• WikipediaCorbitt (automobile company)
• More imagesWikimedia Commons
• WikidataQ5169777