While Sears had stolen the spotlight on precut technology, their lesser-known rival, Aladdin Homes, helped usher in prefabrication, but not initially. For many years, Aladdin fought the concept of pre-assembling parts of homes in their factory, asserting that their precut packages took “one-half the number of cubic feet that the same building would require in panels.” This certainly was a relevant factor very early in the 20th century, before trucks could haul large volumes of cargo. Sears, for example, shipped via rail, and it took up to three railcars to ship one of their precut homes. So, using Aladdin’s analysis, Sears would have incurred twice the shipping expense if they panelized their Honor Bilt Homes. Aladdin also asserted the same rationale that prevails in many corners today, that their “Readi-cut buildings can be erected as with practically the same rapidity as prefabricated panel type buildings.” And they demonstrated this on a large barracks project that was built incredibly fast in the frenetic war year of 1917. Even though Aladdin’s owners didn’t use panels on this project, when the next war was imminent 20 years later, they recognized that the dramatic improvements in transport and material handling would make panelization feasible. What they probably didn’t realize going into that war, however, was the immense scale of the military bases that would have to be built. [For all images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
Sears also took on a large development in 1917, but of a different character – it was 192 units that Sears shipped to house workers for a Standard Oil refinery. Observing the rectangular footprints of these houses would suggest that panelization was feasible, but not in that day and age. Even if trainloads of boxcars could be marshalled, the difficulty of loading and unloading wall panels by hand would be overwhelming, as the modern forklift wasn’t yet widely available, having only been introduced in 1917 too.
Yet, even without the availability of more modern material movement capabilities, Aladdin, Sears, and Hodgsons panelized smaller buildings because all of the panels could fit onto one of the early delivery vehicles (for more on Hodgsons, see Home Building Technology, Part 1: Wall Panel Beginnings). As noted in the page shown from the 1925 Sears catalog, these were known as sectional structures. Hodgsons used six-foot sections/panels, because they were light enough to be manhandled, lacking interior finishes. However, Sears used three-foot panels to ease handling concerns, since they were usually finished on both faces, and because window and door panels fit nicely into modules of this width.
Wall panels were far from the minds of the dozen precut home suppliers as their businesses grew steadily throughout the 1920s. However, they suffered mightily in the depression years of the 1930s. Montgomery Ward quit selling homes in 1931. But Sears, with its massive resources, could artificially boost sales for several years by liberalizing its lending policies. In 1937, Sears received a government contract for 18 prefabricated Civilian Conservation Corps Camps that were built as sectional units. And to supplement lagging sales during the mid-1930s, Sears began selling lumber, just as Trussway would do at the bottom of the Great Recession in Texas in the 1990s. But, just as Trussway would discover, the low margins on lumber sales could not support any level of manufacturing infrastructure. Consequently, the losses occurred by Sears in their operations were compounded by the huge loan write-offs they sustained when they ceased catalog sales in 1940.
Fortunately for Aladdin Homes, its owners could not afford to embark on that kind of aggressive but ultimately imprudent survival strategy. Also unlike their much larger rival, they did not have to answer to shareholders. Instead, Aladdin was able to scrape by until the massive military contracts started being offered for bid in the late 1930s. From their prior experience, Aladdin was able to anticipate what it would take to become the best facilitator of the mass production of the repetitive structures involved. To be successful, they realized that they would have to adopt panelization, and also, for the first time, figure out how to include roof trusses.
Next Month:
Prefabricated Trusses Debut
Articles in This Series