Who Were The Dodge Brothers And Why Did They Leave Ford?

Despite a series of TV ads that ran in 2014 to honor the 100-year anniversary of the first Dodge-brothers-built cars to roll off an assembly line, the brothers' whole story is one the general public knows little about. Meanwhile, many of us learn early on about Henry Ford and the revolutionary car he called the Model T, which kicked off the mass production of automobiles in the United States in 1908. But the stories of these industrious men are inexorably linked. And for the Dodge brothers, it would eventually end in tragedy.

The Dodge family has been an integral part of North America since the days of the Pilgrims. William Dodge was a passenger aboard the Lyon's Whelp, which landed on the shore of Salem, Massachusetts in 1629, nine years after the much more famous Mayflower – whose passengers would go on to establish the Plymouth Colony – arrived on Cape Cod.

Two centuries later, Dodge's descendants had spread far and wide, including the city of Niles in what would become the state of Michigan. Ezekiel Dodge settled in the region in 1830 and opened a marine steam engine shop. He went on to have 11 sons, including Daniel Rugg Dodge, the father of John Francis Dodge (born on Oct. 25, 1864) and Horace Elgin Dodge (born on May 17, 1868) — brothers who would go on to become automotive legends.

Their four-year age difference notwithstanding, the siblings were inseparable even into adulthood, a bond that would benefit them greatly. Their father owned a foundry and a machine shop, and both grew up to become trained machinists, although John was far more skilled with his hands than Horace, who preferred finance and business.

In 1886, the Dodge family moved to Detroit, where the brothers found work at a boilermaker plant until 1894. They then worked as machinists across the Detroit River in Ontario at the Canadian Typograph Company. Horace married in 1896, the same year he invented and patented a dust-shielded four-point bicycle hub bearing. Soon after, the brothers teamed up with Fredrick S. Evans and formed the Evans & Dodge Bicycle Company.

During this period, John became sick with tuberculosis. Meanwhile, Horace split his time between bike building and working for Henry Leland, the man behind both the Cadillac and the Lincoln Motor Company, learning much about automobiles and the burgeoning industry. In 1899, the Canadian Cycle Motor Co. bought out Evans & Dodge. The brothers took their share (worth $10,000), moved back to Detroit, and started a machine shop where they began making auto parts for whoever would hire them.

In 1901, Ransom Olds, founder of Olds Motor Vehicle Company, which made the Oldsmobile, was forced to hire the Dodges after a fire ravaged his factory. John and Horace ended up providing 3,000 transmissions for the Olds "Curved Dash" runabout.

The Dodges' ability to supply all those transmissions cemented their reputation for building quality products and a company that could be relied on. In short order, they were among Detroit's largest parts suppliers. Their achievements attracted the attention of Henry Ford, America's first automotive giant, who was now on his third attempt to launch an automobile manufacturing company. 

Desperate to make his newly formed Ford Motor Company a success, Ford had to bring on a reliable parts supplier. Knowing Ford's history, however, Horace wanted to ensure he and his brother weren't risking their company if he failed yet again.

Thus, a deal was struck. The Dodge brothers would get $10,000 in cash payable within five days of a provided invoice. In addition, they would own 10% of the Ford company, and in the event it declared bankruptcy, the brothers would obtain all rights to it. In exchange, the Dodge boys would borrow $75,000 for additional equipment to bolster production so they could accomplish Ford's task.

On June 16, 1903, Henry Ford, along with John and Horace Dodge and nine other investors, signed documents incorporating the Ford Motor Company. Thus began a relationship that not only formed the basis for what would become the juggernaut of American auto industry and create legends of the men involved, but eventually ignited a feud that would cost Ford millions of dollars and start an automotive rivalry that still endures.

With the contract signed, the Dodge brothers went to work. Focusing their attention on Ford, they shunned all other work , including a second contract offered by Olds. By doing so, they were able to build 650 cars complete with transmissions, rear ends, crankshafts, and front axles during that first crucial year, and by 1912, they supplied Ford with 180,000 transmissions. 

But all was not well in Motor City. Ford knew it was bad business to rely on one supplier, so he began looking for ways to broaden his cars' construction, not the least of which was building his own moving assembly line. Meanwhile, the Dodges had become tired of playing behind the scenes and saw that Ford would likely distance himself from them anyway.

With their 24-acre, 5,000-employee production plant in Hamtramck, Michigan, John and Horace knew they had the means to make their own cars, something they had quietly been dreaming about since Ford released the Model T in 1908. They gave the one-year termination notice required by the contract with Ford and began working to double the capacity of their Hamtramck facility. With John as president and treasurer, and Horace as vice president and general manager, they took their newly formed company – Dodge Brothers Motor Company — public on July 17, 1914, selling $5 million in common stock.

[Featured image by Unknown Author via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY Public Domain]

Four months later, on Nov. 14, the Dodge boys' first vehicle, the Model 30-35 touring car, left Hamtramck and drove into history. For $785 — almost $300 more than the Model T's price of $490 – it was powered by a 212-cubic-inch 4-cylinder engine that produced 35 horsepower, while the Model T only produced 20 hp.The Model 30-35 was the first car to feature an all-steel body.

While some sources claim that the first car to roll off the production line was nicknamed "Old Betsy," the book "The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy" written by Charles K. Hyde, disputes that it was a production car at all, instead calling it an experimental car — one of several the Dodge brothers produced.

According to Hyde's book, thanks to a heavy dose of advanced marketing, the Dodge brothers had already received nearly 72,000 orders before the car rolled out. With only a month and a half left in 1914, they sold 249 Model 30-35s – and 45,000 the following year. They also received 21,000 dealership applications, all of which combined to make them America's third best-selling carmaker by the end of 1915. 

[Featured image by louwman museum (179) via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 2.0]

Their success surely did not sit well with Henry Ford. John and Horace had been fellow board members from 1903 to 1913 before leaving to go on their own, and still were major stockholders (they wouldn't sell their stock back to Ford, for $25 million, until 1919). But in 1916, the Ford Motor Company suddenly stopped paying dividends to its stockholders — including the Dodge brothers — preferring to use the money to pay workers and improve its production facilities. This is when things between them became really ugly. 

On Nov. 2, 1916 — the day after Henry Ford's son Edsel's wedding, which John and Horace attended — Ford received notice that the Dodge brothers were suing because Ford was making decisions that didn't maximize shareholders' returns. Ford countered, claiming corporate profits had to take a back seat to the well-being of its employees and America's car buyers.

Some believe Ford's move was about cutting off additional funds to the Dodge brothers. However, Ford had been exponentially growing its manufacturing infrastructure and simultaneously fending off a radical union called the Industrial Workers of the World (nicknamed the Wobblies), who were trying to organize Ford's workers. This unionization effort resulted in Ford's then-unprecedented $5-a-day wage. Although the Ford Motor Company stated it needed all the money it could get to stay solvent, a judge had other ideas, and in 1920 ordered it to pay $60 million back to its stockholders. 

Not everything was grand for the brothers Dodge, though. Both were hard drinkers. One brother was involved in a bar fight that made the local newspaper — and threatened to kill the paper's owner for running the article. The other pummeled a man into unconsciousness for making fun of him when he couldn't start his hand-crank Ford (something that could actually break your arm). 

Customers clamored to buy their automobiles, but Detroit's high society shunned them. The Grosse Pointe Country Club refused membership to Horace, so he purchased the property next door and built a massive mansion complete with a 12-car garage he intentionally faced towards the country club. When John was kept out of the elite Detroit Club, he turned himself into a Republican party power. 

During the last year of World War I, the Spanish flu broke out in Western Europe and ended up killing as many as 50 million people. The Dodge brothers were not immune. While attending the National Automobile Show in New York City, Horace contracted it and soon became critically ill. John stayed with him the entire time and, as one might expect, also became sick.

Just as Horace started to recover, John died on Jan. 14, 1920. Horace followed, heartbroken, almost 11 months later, on Dec. 10. The Dodge brothers stuck together not just until the bitter end, but past it; both are buried in the Dodge Mausoleum at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery.