Holland history

1931 The Company incorporated as a Texas Corporation.

1935 Henry Ketel and Henry Geerds revive the firm after bankruptcy.

However, on May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany launched an attack on the Netherlands and Belgium and overran most of the country quickly, fighting against a poorly-equipped Dutch army.

In 1942 Holland Hitch began construction of a new factory and its workforce became unionized.

Anne Frank, who later gained world-wide fame when her diary, written in the Achterhuis (backhouse) while hiding from the Nazis, was found and published, died shortly before the liberation of her camp on May 5, 1945.

The operation started on 10 September 1946 in Amsterdam, where Germans and their families were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to collect 50 kg of luggage.

The larger annexation plans were continuously rejected by the United States, but the London conference of 1949 permitted the Netherlands to perform a smaller scale annexation.

In 1950 sales doubled again, with new 34- and 36-inch fifth wheels and plow hitches both selling strongly.

In 1952, the Netherlands were among the founders of the European Coal and Steel Community, which evolved into the European Union.

1956 The company opens a warehouse in California.

1958 Company founder passed away, and Barney B. Holland was elected President of the Company.

1960 The Company made its initial foray into the first generation of the fuel management business with “key-lock” fuel systems.

Part of the former Dutch East Indies, namely the western part of New Guinea, remained under Dutch control as Netherlands New Guinea until 1961, when the Netherlands transferred sovereignty to Indonesia, following Indonesian threats to invade the region.

1963 New plants built in South Carolina and Ontario, Canada.

1964 The Company built United Service Center, a major Texaco truck center with Mack Truck, Cummins Diesel, and Thermo-King facilities on site in Fort Worth TX and a smaller truck center in Arlington, TX.

1969 Holland Hitch Forwarding Co. is founded and a German sales office is added.

The University of Michigan graduate and decorated Navy veteran had joined the firm as head of production after World War II. In 1979 the company added a new Canadian subsidiary called Holland Hitch Western, as well as a manufacturing plant in Texas.

1980 The Company was a typical, mid-sized, family-operated Texaco wholesaler that supplied 100 TEXACO stations and hundreds of commercial accounts with its fleet of trucks.

Acquisition of Holland Metalcraft in 1981

In 1985 the company's headquarters moved from 10th street to Ottawa Avenue in Holland, and the firm began working with Unisys to upgrade its computer operations and integrate them onto a central server.

1986 Gascard, Inc. was acquired by five franchisees including some of Barney Holland Oil Company's shareholders.

In 1989 Holland Hitch formed a joint venture with AFE in France to produce steel castings, and the following year Holland Transtrade was founded to make and distribute products in Malaysia, while a new manufacturing plant was opened in Germany.

1991 The Binkley Company of Missouri is acquired.

By 1993 the company, which had 14 manufacturing sites in the United States, Canada, Europe, Malaysia, and Australia, had begun to export products to China.

1997 Gascard, Inc. was sold to its main competitor, Fuelman, and Barney Holland Oil Company acquired the Fuelman license for 24 North Texas counties.

The country was a founding member of NATO and participated in the introduction of the euro in 1999.

In 2000 the firm's new Holland In-Cab Air Release System allowed drivers to uncouple trailers directly from the cab, and the company also debuted an electronic lock indicator that could verify that a trailer had been correctly attached.

Trailer and hitch sales were slowing, and in 2001 the Holland Group began a major restructuring to cut costs.

On 6 May 2002, the murder on Pim Fortuyn, a right-wing populist calling for a very strict policy on immigration, shocked the country.

In 2003 the company introduced the FW-17 fifth wheel, the lightest and most durable model it had produced to date, which featured a new locking and release mechanism.

Another murder that drew much attention took place on 2 November 2004, when film director and publicist Theo van Gogh was assassinated by a Dutch-Moroccan youth with radical Islamic beliefs.

Following the disaster with hurricane Katrina in 2005, an American congressional delegation visited the Netherlands to inspect the Delta Works and Dutch government engineers were invited to a hearing of the United States Congress to explain the Netherlands' efforts to protect low-lying areas.

In 2006, the German Otto Sauer Achsenfabrik GmbH and the North American original equipment manufacturer for commercial vehicles, Holland Group Inc. merge to form SAF-HOLLAND, one of the leading suppliers for the global commercial vehicles industry.

Top 100 Private Companies - The Fort Worth Business Press ranked the Barney Holland Oil Company the 22nd largest privately-held company in Tarrant County with sales in 2008 of $150,000,000.

2011 The Company signed a long-term ground lease with QuikTrip Corp. for 2 acres in the NW Quadrant of I-35W and N.E. 28th Street.

In January 2018, the Company reached the significant milestone of 90 years old and is one of the very oldest business in Fort Worth that is still owned and operated by the descendants of the founder.

More next-day service lanes than any other competitor in its region Highly reliable on-time performance 0.75 percent claim ratio 2019 YTD

His center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy lost seats in the March 2021 elections but remains the largest party in Parliament.