GATX history

Public Company Incorporated: 1902 as German-American Car CompanyEmployees: 5,000Sales: $989.1 millionStock Exchange: New York

In 1907, when the company owned a fleet of 400 cars, it opened repair and maintenance shops in East Chicago, Indiana; it then began to manufacture new steel tank cars in addition to leasing used ones.

Among its early specialty cars were chromium steel-lined cars to transport nitric acid; rubber-lined cars for phosphoric and muriatic acid; high pressure cars, which they developed in 1914; nickel-lined cars for transport of caustic substances; and airtight cars for dry-ice transport.

By 1916, when the company began to sell stock to the public and changed its name to General American Tank Car Corp., it had a fleet of 2,300 cars and annual revenues of about $3 million.

In 1928 GATC purchased Sharon Tank Car Corporation, whose manufacturing facilities in Sharon, Pennsylvania, became GATX’s second building site.

The following year GATX profits were $6,518,181, or $8.03 per share, exceeding those of 1929 by 13 percent.

In 1932, Epstein, shortly after he became chairman and Lester Selig was appointed president, declared that "a time of depression is the best time to make mergers.

In 1933, when it owned a fleet of nearly 50,000 cars, the company changed its name to the General American Transportation Corp.

The most portentous diversification came in 1939, when the company acquired about 50 percent interest in Barkley-Grow Aircraft Corporation, a Detroit aircraft builder.

By 1940, GATX was operating 60,000 various kinds of freight cars, making it the country’s largest freight car leasing system.

In 1949, the company worked with designer Russel Wright to develop "Meladur", a melamine dinnerware.

In 1959 came the purchase of Traylor Engineering & Manufacturing Company, a producer of cement machinery to complement Fuller's operations.

In 1961 GATC set up as a separate division its two Sharon, Pennsylvania, manufacturing plants, and T. M. Thompson moved into the position of chairman.

In 1963 there was a huge boom in orders because the railroads were stepping up their competition with trucking and barges due to changes in the federal tax laws which made capital equipment purchases desirable.

Demand remained strong through 1965, and GATX ranked fifth among builders.

By 1968, as sales of freight cars dropped significantly throughout the industry, GATC stopped producing freight cars, although it continued to build tank cars.

Soon after changing its name to GATX Corp. in 1975, the company began to exit the car-manufacturing business.

The confluence of these trends led the ocean shipping subsidiary to lose a hefty $7 million in 1976.

By 1977, ASC carried 15 percent of the growing Great Lakes cargo trade.

In addition, a particularly burdensome acquisition was made in 1979, when the company purchased an ocean-tanker business from Chinese entrepreneur C. Y. Chen for $65 million.

In 1981 the company blundered by acquiring the manufacturing facilities of Tech Specialty, a concern that lost money every year since its acquisition.

The restructuring resulted in some financial ups and downs for GATX. In 1984 its profit was $36.7 million due to a $78 million write down, and the following year the company lost $45.5 million.

Within the financial division of GATX, a real estate division was established in 1985 that did not fare well.

Fuller was a wise investment that yielded steady profits until its sale in 1986.

In 1988 GATX Capital forged a joint venture with Credit Lyonnais, one of Europe’s largest banks, to do all future aircraft leasing.

By 1989, the two companies sold 40 percent of the interest to four other financial backers.

Though relatively small for a GATX operation, it is a stable and profitable business for GATX that yielded $6 million in 1991.

In 1993 the company purchased the Scottish Sealand Oil Services Ltd.

In 1995 GATX formed another international joint venture by teaming its GATX Rail Europe, Inc., with AAE Ahaus Alstatter Eisenbahn Holding AG, Switzerland.

In 1996 GATX acquired 65 percent ownership of a bulk-liquid storage facility in Altamira, Mexico.

Although the company achieved record sales of $1.7 billion in 1997, restructuring costs resulted in a net loss of $51 million.

With these one-time charges behind them, the company expected their profitability to rebound in 1998, their 100th anniversary year.

Effective January 1, 2000, General American Transportation Corporation was renamed GATX Rail Corporation, a unit of GATX Corporation.

In 2004, the company sold its technology-leasing unit to CIT Group for about $200 million in cash.

In September 2013, the company sold its 37.5% interest in AAE Ahaus Alstätter Eisenbahn Cargo AG to its partner, AAE Ahaus Alstätter Eisenbahn, for €84.5 million.

In March 2014, the company acquired the North American per diem boxcar fleet of GE Capital Rail Services, consisting of more than 18,500 boxcars.

In November 2018, the company announced an agreement to acquire up to 3,100 railcars from ECN Capital for up to $229 million.

In May 2020, the company sold American Steamship Company, its dry bulk vessel business, to Rand Logistics for $260 million.

"GATX ." International Directory of Company Histories. . Retrieved April 16, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/gatx