The Watson Wagon Company

In the early 1880s, David S. Watson saw farm wagons with slat bottoms being used in grading the West Shore Railroad and recognized the time lost in unloading stone. In 1887 in Stratford, N.Y., he conceived the idea that led to the first bottom-dumping wagon ever built. Seeking a site on the Erie Canal and a railroad trunk line, he moved to Canastota, where in 1893 he began manufacturing bottom-dumping wagons for construction and municipal purposes. The Watson Wagon Company was fully operational in 1896 and produced 60 wagons; 120 were produced the following year, and demand created a backlog in 1898. By 1899, Watson's main customers were municipalities using the wagons to haul garbage and maintain roadways. Priced between $104 and $275, the wagons also drew road-building contractors, and orders increased greatly as good roads became a national priority. The company's five-acre factory, the largest industry in Canastota, employed skilled labor including blacksmiths, body workers, and painters, and its wagons were used across the country. In the 1930s the factory became the Rex-Watson Corporation. During WWII, Oneida Products, Inc. became the owners, and in 1956 Henney Motors, Inc. took over and produced school buses, trailers, and truck bodies. Watson also experimented with a variety of materials and designs, patented many wagon parts, and later concluded that for most uses a properly constructed wooden bottom was better than steel.

Canastota, New York · United States