Gunderson - Greenbrier

Gunderson Bros. corporation has grown in 43 years [since 1918] from a small diesel engine repair shop into one of Portland's major heavy industries. It was located in the Linnton area at the beginning of World War II but constructed a new plant at 4700 NW Front Ave. in 1942. This has since been enlarged from time to time.

During the war, the company built 3,100 molded plywood lifeboats for merchant ships, 1,500 LCM landing craft, 800 Army trailers, 50 land craft control boats, and truck trailers for the Russian government.

After the war, the firm continued actively in marine and general commercial work, building many tugs and barges, railroad cars, semitrailers, and several sizable craft, including the Port of Portland's big sternwheel towboat Portland. It has kept from 200 to 500 men busy most of the time.

Gunderson Bros. Engineering Corp. is currently in the midst of its heaviest car-building program and, with a backlog of orders for some 2,000 railcars, has enough work to keep its expanding work force busy through the second quarter of 1965, reports A. E. Gunderson, vice president and general manager.

In the past 18 months more than $36 million in new car orders have been placed with Gunderson alone, establishing Portland as a major car-building center. Biggest order was placed by Southern Pacific in June for 1,684 freight cars worth $21 million. Other jobs currently booked at Gunderson are for Western Pacific, Santa Fe, Denver & Rio Grande and the Alaska Railroad, which just ordered 100 cars.

Gunderson Bros. began its swing into the railroad car-building program in earnest in January 1963 with a $4 million SP order for 400 flatcars. Since then, the Portland firm has been remodeling some 500 double-door freight cars.

Gundersons is on the Willamette River out NW Front Avenue beyond the public docks where the sub chasers, six of them just off the ways at $1.5-million apiece, have been launched; where the Gunderson barges for California, Washington and Alaska are floated to market and where the giant steel fabricating parts for bridges and dams are barged to installation sites.

Their railroad car business that is new and is making up 70 per cent of the firm's volume today.

In the vast, open-beam shops that cover more than 14 acres of the 40-acre site, they will take you, amid the smell of burning steel and noise, to where they are producing ten cars a day at prices ranging from $15,000 to $30,000 a car, specially designed, 70-foot flat cars, open-end chip cars, drop-bottom copper concentrate cars, the specialty equipment of modern railroading that is made there.

It began in 1957 or 1958. "We were making under-frames for Pacific Fruit Express. When PFE quit making their own cars we found ourselves with the tools for the job and no business. Our choice was to go into full manufacture of railroad cars."

That decision made Gundersons' one of two railroad car makers west of the Mississippi, the fastest growing if still second in size to the giant Pacific Car & Foundry plant at Renton, Washington.

How do you compete from scratch in this? "We have some cost disadvantages, freight, material costs. But when we build for the western roads they get to haul our material, the Southern Pacific our steel from Provo, Utah, for instance. That is $800 worth of in-bound freight for them on each car we build."

"In addition to that we guarantee to load their new car with a payload out of the west to their home lines, lumber, plywood, something from this region. That gives them a $700 or $800 freight payload out-bound. On an order of 1,100 cars, for instance, that is quite a cost factor in our favor."

Performance on delivery dates, cost of manufacturing and quality are factors too. "What we must do constantly," the Gundersons maintain, "is keep our manufacturing costs tight."

There are automated steel-bending machines, cutting six and eight patterns at a crack; machine welding gear, patching the big steel frames together automatically and on one machine, where rivet holes are punched in plate, they explained: "Here is a job that required three men 20 seconds a hole when we began. Today we do it with two men and the time is down to four seconds a hole."

Such technical improvements have meant substantial equipment investment for the Gundersons so you ask how long they expect this railroad car business to continue, beyond the 1,400 Cars built in 1964.

"As we see it, the railroads were somewhat behind in equipment needs. Statistics bear that out. In 1925 this country's Class One railroads owned 2,387,000 cars. In 1961 the Class One railroads owned only 1,621,000 cars. And we know there is more freight today but fewer cars. Of course in 1925 the cars were smaller, 40-foot cars. They didn't have such a thing as a 70-foot flat car or a 100-ton gondola."

It has been the shipper demands for these new pieces of equipment, the triple-deck automobile cars and special materials-handling cars that have improved the railroads' competitive position and their policy on building new rolling stock. Last year the trend led to orders at Gundersons for 1,400 new cars running in cost from $15,000 to $30,000 apiece. "We expect to build another 1,500 at least in 1965."

American Railroad Car Institute figures indicate that American lines must spend $2 billion a year just to stand still on maintenance and upkeep. In addition to this, they estimate they will spend $1 billion a year for the next ten years on new equipment.

That backs off to 65,000 new cars a year, 66 per cent of them in private shops like Gundersons. The railroads still build 33 per cent of their own cars.

This boom has meant current orders at Gundersons for 1,100 gondola cars for Southern Pacific; 120 wood chip cars for Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway and the Great Northern; 300 triple-deck hog cars for the Union Pacific; 400 bulkhead flat cars for the SP and the Santa Fe; 50 drop-bottom copper concentrate cars for the SP&S and 1,100 flat cars for the SP.

Gundersons Negotiating Sale of Firm. Eugene Hotel Not Part of Deal. - Negotiations are under way for the sale of Gunderson Bros. Engineering Corp. of Portland to the FMC Corp. of San Jose, Calif., it was learned Wednesday.

Gunderson Bros., a steel fabricating firm, owns and operates a truck sales and service division in Eugene. C. E. Gunderson, president of the Portland corporation, and A. E. Gunderson, vice president, also own the Eugene Hotel.

C. E. Gunderson said Wednesday morning from his farm at Scappoose that a possible sale of the Portland plant "is being negotiated" but would not indicate whether his Eugene truck division is included in the deal. He said the Eugene Hotel property at E. Broadway and Pearl Street is not a part of the transaction.

James Hait, president of the FMC Corp., formerly known as the Food Machinery and Chemical Corp., told the Register-Guard from San Jose that "negotiations are not far enough along to determine whether the deal will be consummated or terminated."

FMC is a diversified equipment manufacturing company with "1,000 product lines," Hait said. The company has 36,000 employes in the United States and in its foreign operations and ranks about 85th in size among U.S. industrial corporations. In 1962, FMC was 105th in ranking of the 500 largest industrials in the country. The corporation had 1963 sales of $617,959,000 with profits of nearly $33 million.

Gunderson Bros. started in 1918 as a small diesel engine repair shop and during World War II constructed landing craft, tugboats, lifeboats and other military vessels.

The firm now fabricates railroad freight cars, ships and barges, bridges and other steel products. Gunderson has operated its Eugene truck division since 1945, according to Charles Sikes, manager of the Eugene plant. The company employs nearly 400 workmen in Portland and has a Eugene staff of 40.

San Jose Firm Closes Gunderson Bros. Deal. - FMC Corp., of San Jose, Calif., diversified manufacturers of four basic types of products, completed arrangements for the purchase of Gunderson Bros. Engineering Corp., a major Portland manufacturing firm for 47 years.

James M. Hait, president of FMC Corp., did not reveal terms of the purchase agreement, but said that shares of FMC stock would be exchanged for all outstanding shares of Gunderson company stock. Hait said that the Portland firm will continue to operate as a subsidiary of FMC under the general management of Alvin E. Gunderson, formerly a co-owner of the firm.
War Gives Boost

Gunderson Bros. started in 1918 as a small wheel and rim service station at 435 SW Stark St., advanced into diesel engine sales and service until shortly before World War II when the firm won some war contracts. Since then the firm has advanced into a multi-million dollar business and had announced, just a few weeks ago, a new $4.5 million contract for the construction of 200 specialized boxcars for Southern Pacific.

Principal product lines include marine craft, barges, and various types of railroad freight cars, the latter constituting much of Gunderson's work load in recent years. The company employs approximately 850 persons, though employment varies according to current contract loads.

FMC Corp. was formed in 1928 under the name of Food Machinery Corp., and later changed the name to Food Machinery and Chemical Corp. in 1948. The name was changed again in 1961 to the present FMC Corp. The company, listed recently by Fortune magazine as 69th among the nation’s leading manufacturers in terms of size, had gross sales in 1964 of $830 million.

The firm, with a payroll of 36,000 and plants located throughout the United States, manufactures diversified machinery products, agricultural and industrial chemicals, fibers and films, and defense material.

Gunderson Bros. reportedly earned more than $6 million last year. The plant is on a 40-acre tract, with 14 acres under roofs, at 4700 NW Front Ave.

Gunderson Gets Big SP Job. - Gunderson Bros. Engineering Corp. of Portland announced Tuesday it has received new contracts for more than $18.5 million for construction of railroad cars for Southern Pacific Railroad.

C. Bruce Ward, Gunderson president, said the firm has a $16 million contract to build 1,000 new railway box cars and a $2.5 million contract for 105 gondola cars. Five hundred of the box cars will be built for Southern Pacific and 500 for the Cotton Belt, a SP subsidiary. The new cars will begin rolling off the assembly line immediately and that completion of the huge order is expected by February. Ward said the firm will need an additional 500 workers for the SP orders. The firm presently employs 1,100.

SP-Cotton Belt orders to Gunderson have totaled more than $95 million since 1963. The firm has built 2,900 box cars for SP in the last three years and that the firm recently completed delivery of 325 flat cars.

The announcement was hailed by the forest products industry, which has faced critical shortages of box cars in recent years.

[Railroad car manufacturing constitutes approximately 65 per cent of the overland and marine manufacturing business of Gunderson Bros. Engineering Corp. of Portland. Workmen tighten doors on these 50-foot boxcars which are produced locally at the rate of eight per day. Gunderson is completing contract for 1,000 boxcars.]

Manufacture of marine and overland transportation equipment on a gigantic scale has given Gunderson Bros. Engineering Corp. of Portland the reputation of being the largest steel consumer in Oregon.

The staggering quantities of steel consumed by the wholly-owned subsidiary of FMC Corp. of San Jose, Calif., are expected to reach 50,000 tons in 1969.

The steel is transformed into railroad boxcars, copper concentrate dump cars, bulk flour tank cars, assault patrol boats for use in Vietnam, all-steel "super barges," housing for landing craft propellers, and miscellaneous steel products.

In 1969, Gunderson's 1400 employees will earn an estimated $8 million plus. Some 1,200 employees are shop workers—manufacturers who get their hands dirty. Half of the 1,200 are welders, tackers and fitters.

The company's marine and overland manufacturing processes sprawl over 45 acres at 4700 NW Front Ave. Twenty two of the acres are under roof, protecting the army of helmeted welders from Oregon's rains.

Southern Pacific Railroad has placed contracts totaling $18.4 million for 1,000 wide-door railroad boxcars and 116 air operated bottom dump cars. The latter are for use by the copper industry in Arizona.

Workers are completing eight of the all-steel boxcars daily. Cost of each car is $16,000. There has been a chronic shortage of 50-foot cars at Pacific Northwest lumber and grain terminals. The boxcars will be used to haul forest products, including big rolls of newsprint. Eight hundred wide-door boxcars have been delivered. The remainder will be completed by mid-April.

The dump cars, which will haul copper concentrates from the refinery to the smelter, are manufactured at a cost of $25,000 apiece. Manufactured at the rate of two a week, 23 of the 116 have been delivered.

In another two months, Gunderson will begin work on contracts totaling $3 million for construction of railroad cars for hauling of wood chips. They will measure 60 feet in length and have a capacity of 100 tons apiece.

Gunderson's boxcar manufacturing constitutes approximately 65 per cent of the company's total business. When current contracts are completed, Gunderson will have built 7,000 cars for SP since 1963 when railcar production began.

In the construction of marine equipment, Ward said Gunderson is near the end of a $12 million Navy contract to build 68 assault patrol boats for use in Vietnam. The deck section of the last of these boats will be laid next week and deliveries will be completed in May. In addition to this contract, 37 of the assault boats were built last year under a $5 million contract. The Navy patrol boats, mounted with two 20-mm turrets, are built of heavy steel plating and powered by twin diesels of 900 total horsepower.

Crowley Launch and Tug Co. of San Francisco will be the recipient by the end of June of four 250-foot deck cargo barges. The first two of the steel-hulled "super barges," with beams of 76 feet and molded depth of 16 feet, are under construction at the company's manufacturing facility along the west side of the Willamette River.

[Workmen stand beneath bow of one of four 250-foot long deck-type "super cargo" barges being built by Gunderson for Crowley Launch and Tug Co., San Francisco.]

In a separate contract, two all-steel 312-foot barges are scheduled to be delivered by mid year for PAC Corp. of Seattle. The barges will be 68 feet wide and 19 feet deep.

Firm Gets New Name - San Jose, Calif. — A new name, “Gunderson, Inc.,” has been officially adopted for FMC Corporation’s subsidiary, Gunderson Bros. Engineering Corp. of Portland, Ore.

Founded nearly 50 years ago, Gunderson, Inc., specializes in design and construction of marine craft and railway freight cars at its 48-acre facilities on the Willamette River. Since its acquistition by FMC in 1965, Gunderson has broadened its activities in the production of special type of commercial and naval marine vessels and barges. Two years ago, the company completed a large side-launch way that can accommodate ships or barges up to 600 feet long and weighing more than 6,000 tons.

This year, Gunderson launched the world’s largest deck cargo barge, a 400 by 100 foot vessel, currently used in the Alaskan trade, that is capable of carrying 12,500 tons of deck cargo or 64 fully loaded railroad cars.

Gunderson, Inc, has, since 1960, become one of the West Coast’s leading producers of welded steel and aluminum railcars of virtually every type used by the nation’s major railroads. These include giant boxcars, specialized flatcars, gondolas and fast-discharge hopper cars.

Freight car orders totaling nearly $12 million have been placed in Portland by Burlington Northern with Gunderson, Inc., a subsidiary of FMC.

The 150 wood chip cars, each with 6,900 cubic feet capacity and double end-doors, and the 600 covered hopper cars, each with 4,700 cubic feet capacity, will cost a total of $11.6 million.

The wood chip cars and 400 of the covered hopper cars are for Burlington Northern service, and 200 of the covered hopper cars are for Burlington Northern’s subsidiary company, the Colorado and Southern Railway Co., which headquarters at Denver, Colo.

The covered hopper cars would be used primarily for grain loadings across the entire Burlington Northern system, including the highly productive grain areas of the Pacific Northwest, and for alumina and other such commodities that are growing in importance to the area economy.

Production will begin in February on the chip cars, with full delivery of all cars by the end of March. Production will begin in May on the covered hopper cars, with completion some time in August.

The complete order is the largest ever placed with Gunderson, Inc., by the Burlington Northern or its predecessor companies. It brings the total amount of Burlington Northern and predecessor company freight car orders for 1970 and 1971 at Gunderson, Inc., to nearly $23 million.

The third 500-car order in the past 12 months from Southern Pacific railroad has been placed with Gunderson, Inc. The order for the 70-ton, rigid underframe boxcars, with double eight-foot sliding doors, brings to 10,064 the number of railroad cars purchased from Gunderson by SP and its subsidiary, the Cotton Belt.

Value of the three orders received in the past 12 months totals $24 million and puts the value of cars ordered by SP from the Portland firm in recent years at $145 million.

Rail cars manufactured at Gunderson's Front Avenue facility are being delivered at the rate of 15 cars per day, Galbraith reported. Gunderson, Inc., is a subsidiary of FMC Corp., San Jose, Calif.

A $40 million order for 2,375 railroad freight cars was announced Friday by Gunderson, Inc., and Southern Pacific Transportation Co. It was the largest manufacturing order ever placed by private industry with an Oregon firm. The order will be filled within the next eight months. It includes 2,000 wide-door boxcars and 350 chip cars, designed for transporting wood products, and 25 gondola cars for moving copper concentrates.

The first of the chip cars will come off the firm’s northwest Portland assembly line about Nov. 20. Delivery of the 2,000 boxcars is expected to start in mid-January.

The new order increases the railroad's contracts with Gunderson to a dollar volume of nearly $200 million for a total of 12,840 cars built or on order since 1963. He noted that the railroad has already taken delivery of 350 woodchip cars built by Gunderson earlier this year under a $6 million contract.

When things get slow over at the FMC Marine and Rail Equipment Division in Portland, folks keep busy reinventing the railroad car. Last week, the high cubic capacity boxcar for low-density cargoes was unveiled.

The bright red prototype was delivered to Georgia Pacific Corp. for an initial load of paper products from a GP plant in Bellingham. The car has 50 percent more space than a standard 70-ton boxcar to take advantage of new tariffs established for movement of bulky, light cargo. Lighter cargo means thinner steel can be used, as well as a wood floor. The vehicle weighs nearly four tons less (about 56,000 pounds) carries 30 tons of cargo and costs about the same as conventional equipment.

A severely depressed rail car market — none are being built now — gives FMC the time and assembly line space to fiddle with new designs. Several other cars, including a coal car, lighter grain car and a special gondola car, have been built and are being evaluated.

At least 300 people are expected to go to work by summer now that a group of Oregon investors has purchased the Marine and Rail Equipment Division of FMC Corp. The sale returns ownership of the ailing division to the state after 12 years of ownership by the Chicago-based FMC.

The company will be renamed Gunderson Inc., after the brothers who started and ran the 66-year-old company until FMC acquired it in 1973.

FMC has had no production employees on the payroll for most of the year. Gunderson Inc. hopes to have up to 400 workers producing rail cars soon. Greenbrier has ordered 100 Twin-Stack railcars and is negotiating a contract to lease at least 400 more.

It was doubted the plant would reach its former maximum 1979 employment level of 1,500 to 2,000 workers producing barges and more than 6,000 railcars a year, particularly since there are no prospects for barge construction work this year and the railroad industry is oversupplied with boxcars and tank cars.

In 1979, FMC’s division annual sales were $250 million a year, but in the last three, they were less than $40 million. At one time, FMC was among the top four railcar builders in the nation, reaching peak production of 6,027 cars in 1979. It produced about 200 barges and other unpowered vessels, and in the 1960s, the plant constructed five oil tankers for Standard Oil of California.

The Port of Tacoma celebrated the opening of Sea-Land Service Inc.'s new $31 million, 76-acre container loading terminal Monday, and among those in the audience with the most to smile about were executives of Gunderson Inc. of Portland.

Part of the ceremony was the inauguration of Sea-Land's three-times-per-week, double-stack unit train service from Tacoma, serving the Midwest and East Coast. Those trains are made up of railcars carrying two-tier loads of shipping containers.

Production of the bright red "Twin-Stack" railcars for Sea-Land is helping carry Gunderson into the black much faster than projected, according to C. Bruce Ward, president.

With Twin-Stack orders piling up, more than 500 employees are back at work. Fewer than 100 employees were at FMC when Greenbrier took over.

The Portland manufacturer's first order came from Greenbriar, which is the controlling owner of Gunderson. As stock for its leasing operation, Greenbriar ordered 20 of the cars, each of which has five platforms, hinged together with connectors similar to those on articulated buses.

Now, the Sea-Land order for 83 cars (415 platforms that can carry 830 double-stacked containers) is nearly completed and Gunderson soon will begin work on a 100-car (500 platform) order for Burlington Northern Railroad.

Also in the order book is a 70-car order from Southern Pacific Railroad, the railroad that began experimenting with double-stack cars before the Portland company was even in the market.

Gunderson's main competition is Thrall Car Manufacturing Co. of Chicago, which entered the market a year earlier.

Eight years ago, there were 17 railroad car manufacturers in the United States, filling orders totaling around 100,000 cars annually. Thanks to overbuilding, the recession of the early 1980s and generally hard times for railroads, the market plunged to just 5,000 cars in 1983 and 10,000 cars last year, and now there are just three rail car manufacturers. One of them is Gunderson Inc. of Northwest Portland, the only rail car maker left west of Dallas, Texas.

A corporate descendant of the Gunderson Brothers company that was also known for barge and tanker construction in the 1970s, the manufacturer has been locally owned since 1985. That was when FMC Corp., anxious to get out of the depressed business, sold the rail-car and marine construction company to its former president, C. Bruce Ward, and a Lake Oswego-based business group called the Greenbrier Companies, headed by William A. Furman, which holds a majority interest in Gunderson Inc.

The rail car market has not rebounded to the heady times of the late 1970s; but Gunderson currently holds enough orders to keep all of its approximately 500 employees busy through April. Prospects look good for additional orders at least through June. Gunderson still faces tough competition from the other remaining car builders, Trinity Industries Inc. of Dallas, Texas, and Thrall Car Manufacturing Co., Chicago Heights, Ill., he said.

In the halcyon 1970s, the Portland company’s order backlog went as long as 18 months and Gunderson Bros. and later FMC employed 2,000. The company back then also was regularly building barges and putting together five short-haul tankers for Chevron Corp.

Gunderson, a division of Lake Oswego-based Greenbriar Companies, intends to add 360 new employees in coming months to deal with new orders and surging demand for railroad cars. The maker of rail cars and marine barges announced Thursday that it's been hired to build 100 new refrigerated boxcars and modify 106 existing cars into refrigerated units.

The customer, Cryo-Trans of Owing Mills, Maryland, will pay Gunderson nearly $20 million for the cars and expects delivery within 10 months, said Gunderson spokesman Mark Rittenbaum.

To help meet that deadline, Gunderson intends to hire 100 workers at its Northwest Portland plant and 30 at each of its facilities in Springfield and Finley, Washington, near the Tri-Cities. That's in addition to 200 vacant positions that the company announced two weeks ago it would begin filling.

Lake Oswego, Ore. Nov. 8, 2007 -- Gunderson Rail Services announced that it has changed its name to Greenbrier Rail Services. All former Gunderson Rail Services, Meridian Rail Services, and Rail Car America facilities will now operate under the name Greenbrier Rail Services. Greenbrier Rail Services, a full service provider of railcar repair, maintenance, wheel and refurbishment services, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Greenbrier Companies.

Greenbrier Rail Services operates one of the largest railcar service networks in North America with 35 strategically located facilities specializing in railcar repair and maintenance, complete wheel services, axle finishing, and the manufacturing and sale of freight car components, such as doors, cushioning units, couplers, yokes, and associated parts.

The Greenbrier Company builds new railroad freight cars in its three manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Mexico and marine barges at its U.S. facility. It also repairs and refurbishes freight cars and provides wheels and railcar parts at 35 locations across North America. Greenbrier builds new railroad freight cars and refurbishes freight cars for the European market through both its operations in Poland and various subcontractor facilities throughout Europe. Greenbrier owns approximately 9,000 railcars, and performs management services for approximately 136,000 railcars.