In the early days of the automotive industry when the familiar giants such as Ford and General Motors were fledgling operations, they had not incorporated the manufacture of all vehicular components under one roof.  Many small companies specialized in the manufacture of a particular component, which they sold to others who specialized in the assembly of vehicles.  An early automobile often had its parts manufactured by a prodigious number of different manufacturers.  One example of a company which specialized in one vehicular component is the Mifflinburg Body Company of Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania.  The Company produced wooden car and truck bodies from the years 1917 to 1942.  During the years of its peak production, the Body Company ranked as the second largest manufacturer of wooden bodies in the United States.

    The history of the Mifflinburg Body Company begins with the founding of the Mifflinburg Buggy Company in 1897.  It was one of seventeen different buggy companies that existed at different times in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, once known as "the buggy town".  The Mifflinburg Buggy Company, owned by A.A. Hopp, Robert S. Gutelius, and Harry A. Blair, was one of the larger ones, being a consolidation of several earlier companies.  It manufactured nearly half of the buggies produced by all of the area's buggy companies. 

    Harrison Orwig founded the Mifflinburg Body and Gear Company in 1911 to produce running gears and other parts for buggies.  In 1916 Robert Gutelius and William F. Sterling of the Mifflinburg Buggy Company bought out the Body and Gear Company and integrated the operation into the Mifflinburg Buggy Company.  The Company gradually phased out production of buggies and began to produce mainly wooden truck bodies.  By December 29, 1917 when the partners of the Buggy Company changed the name to Mifflinburg Body Company, the Company had been completely converted to the manufacture of bodies for motor vehicles.

    Judging from extant copies of catalog No. 1 (1922) and catalog No. 4 (1927), the Mifflinburg Body Company produced a varied line of commercial auto bodies:  open stake trucks, panel trucks, estate wagons, convertible truck beds, and insulated truck bodies, a Mifflinburg specialty.

    The crash of 1929 did not immediately affect production, but soon after that major automobile companies such as the Ford Motor Company began to make their own bodies.  This limited drastically the sale of bodies by the Mifflinburg Body Company.  In 1932, the Company made its last standard station wagon body, but continued to make custom and special order bodies for several years.  Truck bodies were still in demand for export because the Mifflinburg Body was designed to be dismantled and shipped in a flat compact form.

    Production after the Depression consisted mainly of special orders such as a government order in 1932.  In February of that year the firm received an order for 500 Post Office bodies for half-ton chassis and in June a similar order for 550 bodies for one and a half ton chassis.  The Company was also awarded a contract in the same year to produce ambulance bodies for shipment to Hawaii.

    The Company produced truck bodies and some special order station wagons until the 1940-42 bankruptcy.  In its best years the Company had an average daily production of approximately 20 bodies a day.  At the peak of production in 1928-29 the firm grossed approximately $1,000,000 in sales.  However, later in the Depression, the Company began to produce furniture because of the reduced demand for wooden bodies.  This change to furniture production on February 20, 1933 did not involve any drastic alteration in the plant because its equipment was basically woodworking and upholstering machinery. 

    In December of 1942 the Company was sold to Lewis Markus of the American Bowling Alley Company of New York.  In 1943 the name of the Mifflinburg Body Company was changed to Mifflinburg Body Works. 

    The most successful years were a short ten years (1920-1930) after the firm was founded.  The market for the Company's products was at it apex during the years 1927 to 1929 because the major automobile companies were becoming important elements in everyday life, but had not yet applied their more efficient methods of production to body assembly.  In addition, the Mifflinburg Body Company had certain real advantages.  The truck bodies it produced were especially easy to ship, and the strong sales force promoted the product throughout the East and Midwest as well as abroad.  The catalogs they had published were well written.  The authors left no stone unturned when discussing the advantages of their product as an asset to the businessman, and illustrated their points with detailed and even colored pictures.

    Because of the poorly conceived production line and the lack of standardization in production, the process was appallingly wasteful of both time and material. 
   
    Productions of bodies declined, never again to reach a peak like the one of 1928, and the attempts to save the Company by turning to other wood products ultimately failed and the firm went into bankruptcy.

    Thus, the haphazard production methods of the Mifflinburg Body Company doomed it to being lost among the legions of early automotive industries which foundered and sank in the backwash of the major auto companies.  By optimizing efficiency of integrated production, the major automotive manufacturers buried those who did not do the same.