From Race Cars to Military Trucks

March 13, 2019 Volume 1, Number 3

Happens all the time – I see the sign above a tire shop or a burger joint proudly proclaiming, ‘Serving the community since 1999’, and I have to chuckle a bit. 1999? That was just yesterday, a mere 20 years. I have bodily afflictions older than that.

In such moments I always think way back to my late father taking me to a village church near Oxford, England where he sang in the choir many years earlier. He was a kid at the time so he had no trouble getting through the door of that unheated stone structure. But as an adult when we visited I had to duck, a lot, because the church – still in regular use — had been built in 1068 AD when folks were a lot shorter. 1068! That’s old.

In our world, however, 20 years is really not such a small deal. And that means 100 years represents real longevity.

In which case Cummins turning 100 this year is mighty significant. Quite apart from being even older than me, it’s a mighty interesting company. And always has been, it seems.

THE RACING MOMENTS

Its colorful history includes building race cars for several trips to the Indy 500, the first in 1931 with diesel power’s debut at the legendary event. Rather than predicting victory, Cummins emphasized #8’s fuel efficiency and it actually ran the entire race without a single pit stop, consuming only 31 gallons of fuel. It finished 13th out of 33 cars.

In 1952 the Cummins #28 car achieved a 139-mph track record, and took the pole with the first turbocharged diesel engine to run the 500. Sadly the 430-hp racer was forced to retire at the 100-mile mark while running with the leaders. The exact cause became the subject of race lore, but I believe the culprit was a broken oil line.

Such exploits were probably not on the minds of Clessie Cummins and his financial backer and business partner William G. Irwin when the company was founded in a former warehouse in Columbus, Indiana. That was February 1919, and it employed just four people. Then it grew. And grew. The employee count is now more than 58,000 men and women working across the globe.

Clessie and William built Cummins around the inspiration of Germany’s Rudolf Diesel and a technology that had until then floundered in North America. Little did they know their company would eventually expand to Brazil, China, India, and the United Kingdom, to name just a few locations.

The founders’ innovative spirit can be seen throughout the company’s history and today it has no shortage of potential through advances in clean diesel, electrification, and other low-carbon alternatives.

AMONG CUMMINS MILESTONES…

In 1932 the engine maker powered the first ever all-diesel commercial highway fleet in the U.S., that being the west coast’s Purity Food Stores. Within a few years, the fleet had more than 300 commercial trucks powered by Cummins diesels.

By 1936 Cummins reached the $1 million mark in sales, but didn’t turn its first profit until the following year, 18 years after its founding. It had 51% of the U.S. diesel truck market by 1955. It took quite a while longer, but in 1976 the company first hit a record $1 billion in sales.