An Old Name, New Life

One of the oldest nameplates in trucking made a curtain call on Jan. 25, as the first Xpeditor from Autocar LLC rolled off the production line.

Grand Vehicle Works Holdings of Union City, Ind., bought the Xpeditor chassis and Autocar name after the U.S. Justice Department, citing anti-trust concerns, required Volvo Trucks North America to sell its low-COE truck business as part of the deal to acquire Mack Trucks/Renault VI. The truck chassis — the low cab forward WX and ultra-low WXLL — is being built under contract at Volvo’s New River Valley plant in Virginia until GVW Holdings establishes its own production facility.

For GVW Holdings, a relatively new face in truck manufacturing, the deal for the Xpeditor and Autocar name couldn’t have been sweeter: a proven chassis and a brand with a history that dates to 1899, just one year after the Winton Motor Vehicle Co. built the first truck in North America. The brand changed owners a number of times before being acquired by Volvo in 1981 as part of the acquisition of White Motor.

At Volvo, the Xpeditor is said to have been the company’s most profitable chassis. At the time of the divestiture it was enjoying an increasing market share, a situation Autocar president Bob Enright wants to see continue. Enright, the former president of Western Star Trucks, sees a lot of potential for Autocar as a niche player in specific vocational markets such as refuse.

GVW Holdings specializes in niche markets. The company owns Union City Body Co., a manufacturer of step-van bodies, and Workhorse Custom Chassis, a step-van and RV chassis supplier. The Workhorse chassis is what used to be the General Motors P-Series stripped chassis and, with the Union City body, gives Workhorse an integrated step-van product. It also owns Uptime Parts, an aftermarket service parts distributor specializing in van parts. With Autocar, GVW Holdings now has four separate divisions, all concentrating on distinct specialty markets. The Autocar group has spent the past six months adding dealer locations and building a service network first in the United States and then in Canada. The brand is expected to be sold and supported by some of the Volvo dealers that carried it before.

Enright says the company’s size is an advantage. “We have a great name and a great product, and as a smaller company we’re a little quicker on our feet,” he says. “That offers us the opportunity to give customers the specialized attention some of the bigger manufacturers can’t provide.”