The Watson Wagon Company

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 he noted the time lost in unloading the stone. Then in 1887, in Stratford, N.Y., came the idea that resulted in the production of the first bottom-dumping wagon ever built. , Wanting to locate on the Erie Canal and a railroad trunk line, Watson moved to Canastota. In 1893, he began to manufacture bottom-dumping wagons for construction and municipal purposes at his new location. , The Watson Wagon Company was fully operational in 1896 and produced 60 wagons. The following year 120 wagons were produced and in 1898 a demand for the wagon created a backlog. , By 1899 Watson's main customers were municipalities using the wagons to haul garbage and maintain roadways. Priced between $104 and $275, they attracted the attention of road-building contractors and as good roads became a national priority, Watson's orders for wagons increased greatly. , The Watson Wagon five-acre factory became the Rex-Watson Corporation in the 1930's. During world war two Oneida Products, Inc. became the owners. In 1956, Henney Motors, Inc. took over and produced school buses, trailers, and truck bodies. , Heading west on Center Street, past the library, we see the old shell of what is left of the Watson Wagon Company. This was the largest industry in Canastota. Its buildings spread over quite a good-sized area. Here is where they made the famous Watson Dump Wagon. The wagons were used all over the country. This business also required a great deal of skilled labor, including blacksmiths for the ironwork, skilled body workers and painters. , Wagon Not Quite a Wagon , The Canastota Canal Town Board of Directors was thrilled to find what it believed to be a Watson bottom-dump wagon. The museum purchased the wagon and brought it to Canastota in October 2010. , A newspaper article with photos on the website of the wagon brought a response from a wagon expert in Minnesota, who identified the wagon as a Troy/Ajax bottom-dump wagon manufactured in Troy, Ohio. , Watson was known to experiment with a wide variety of materials and designs. He was often successful and patented many of his wagon parts. But many of those innovations were copied by the competition as patents expired after seven years. , “We experimented with steel wagons and steel bottoms many years ago. We abandoned them because it was clear that for the great majority of uses a properly constructed wooden bottom is much better.” – Watson Dumping Wagons Catalog, @1915, pg. 21