Little Rock factory made bikes ridden ’round the world

Arkansas History Commission
Women test bicycle rims for "trueness" on June 19, 1963, during a visit by Arkansas Gazette columnist Ernie Deane to the assembly line of the AMF Cycle Division factory on 65th Street  in Little Rock.
Arkansas History Commission Women test bicycle rims for "trueness" on June 19, 1963, during a visit by Arkansas Gazette columnist Ernie Deane to the assembly line of the AMF Cycle Division factory on 65th Street in Little Rock.

There was a time when Little Rock was not only the capital city of Arkansas, it was also one of the bicycle-producing capitals of the United States.

Hundreds of Arkansans worked in a bicycle factory on West 65th Street, and the machines they made were famous and sold around the world.

To understand and appreciate this seemingly unlikely fact, we must travel back in time to the turn of the 20th century.

In the early 1900s in New Jersey, a man named Rufus Lenoir Patterson invented one of the first automated cigarette-manufacturing machines. Patterson formed a small company he called the American Machine & Foundry Co.

By 1943, Rufus Patterson's son, Moorehead, had taken the reins of his father's factory-machine shop, a still sleeping giant. An entrepreneur, he quickly realized the company had to diversify to continue what had been rapid growth. During World War II, American Machine & Foundry became a big defense contractor. From 1948 to 1953, defense-related products -- radar scopes, guided missile parts, parts for nuclear reactors -- rose from 7 percent to 50 percent of its sales.

After the war, Moorehead also turned his attention to providing recreation equipment for the nation's growing middle class.

Bowlers will remember seeing the AMF logo on bowling alleys and bowling equipment, and in fact, under Moorehead Patterson, the company perfected the automated pin-setting machine. The AMF Automatic Pinspotter revolutionized bowling, according to a history of the company in the Harvard Business School's Lehman Brothers Collection of 20th century business archives.

Yours Truly worked as a pin jockey in an AMF bowling alley during the late 1960s. Oh, the stories I could tell about good old Space Lanes in Bellevue, Neb. ... but for propriety and my reputation, I should just continue with this story. Where were we? Oh yes, diversification.

In 1950, American Machine & Foundry bought Roadmaster bicycles from the Cleveland Welding Co., and the AMF Wheeled Goods Division was born. (Side note to aspiring "pickers," Cleveland Welding also owned the Shelby Cycle Co., which produced some of the most collectible bicycles ever manufactured.)

Roadmasters were made in Ohio. So how did they get to Little Rock? So glad you asked.

After World War II, suburbs sprouted up like weeds. The Leave It to Beaver-style subdivisions of the 1950s provided safe, paved areas for families to teach their children to ride; and there were plenty of children: The baby boom was, well, booming.

Meanwhile, U.S. bicycle manufacturers faced stiff competition from English imports. Those English chaps were producing lighter weight, stylish, three-speed racing bicycles, and

they were being received eagerly in the suburbs.

European competition was so strong that the Bicycle Manufacturers Association petitioned the U.S. Tariff Commission for tariffs on bicycle imports. At first the commission refused, but within a few years the winds of protectionism began to blow, and in 1955 the commission recommended (with the blessing of President Ike Eisenhower) a tariff of 22.5 percent to 30 percent that was levied on most categories of bicycle imports.

The major U.S. manufacturers, including Huffy, Murry, Schwinn and AMF Roadmaster, wanted to seize the advantage of this relief to modernize their manufacturing facilities and increase production.

But during the battle for tariffs, AMF also had become involved in an extended United Auto Workers strike at its Cleveland manufacturing facility. Production there had ground to a near halt.

In 1953, AMF had decided to dodge its union troubles while modernizing its bicycle production -- by moving its manufacturing operation from Cleveland to Little Rock.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

By constitutional amendment enacted in 1947, Arkansas had become a right-to-work state, meaning nonunion workers were allowed to negotiate individually with employers, bypassing any union that managed to organize at a business. But the attempt to restart the bike company with a nonunion workforce ended with a bit of irony: The United Steelworkers of America organized Local 5559 at the plant in 1957.

In 1962 came a bit of an odd scandal in which union leaders talked their members into voting against a pay raise by claiming that friends of then Gov. Orval Faubus wanted union pay demands to drive AMF to close the factory. More on that tidbit in a moment.

An article in the June 1956 American Bicyclist and Motorcyclist magazine, titled "Open for Business!," profiled the $1,250,000, 217,000-square-foot plant in Little Rock that was turning out 3,000 bikes every 24 hours. All the fabrication, finishing, assembly and testing stations on the assembly line were linked by six separate conveyor systems -- more than a mile's worth of belts.

The article called the facility one of the nation's most advanced bike factories, using electrostatic paint spraying (providing a highly durable finish). AMF warranted its bicycle frames for life.

There was a large, air-conditioned cafeteria and abundant natural lighting. The plant had safety features not always found in factories of that era, such as ventilation controls for paint and welding operations and safety devices to protect machine operators.

The plant, with a flat-roofed administration building in front of a long factory building with a unique 10-peaked roof line, still stands at 4300 W. 65th St. (across from Arkansas Foodbank). It houses the HotFoot Group LLC, a trucking company.

In 1956, my slumbering little Southern city was awakened by two major events. The first was a visit from the king himself, Elvis Presley, who brought his gyrating hips and curling lip to then-Robinson Auditorium. The second and much more significant event was the filing in February of a lawsuit against the Little Rock School District by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) -- one of the pivotal events leading to the desegregation of Central High School.

Segregation was still well entrenched in the schools and in workplaces such as AMF Cycle, which had no black employees in those early years. Eventually it integrated.

YOUNG LOVE

If you look for information about AMF Cycle's Little Rock operations on the Internet, you'll find references to the company's departure from the state in 1962. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

On June 19, 1963, Arkansas Gazette columnist Ernie Deane paid a visit to the 65th Street plant and watched hundreds of people busily assembling bicycles. A few days later, his "Arkansas Traveler" column not only recounted his tour of the facility, it touched on the history of the bicycle and its impact on society (see accompanying story).

Deane died in 1991, but other eyewitnesses are still alive. "A lot of people will remember, but they'd have to be in their 70s," Linda Shiflett said Tuesday, laughing on the porch of her home in west Little Rock. "We're all old now."

Linda met her husband, Richard Shiflett, in 1959 while they worked at the plant.

Linda (who was then Linda Blaylock) was just out of high school when she landed the prestigious job of secretary to the sales manager. Richard had recently left the Army and a job at a Coca-Cola bottling plant; he learned about an opening for a quality inspector at the factory from an employment agency.

They were hired about the same time. Richard's job required that he walk through the sales office several times a day while making rounds through the plant. Linda took notice of this handsome young man with a "nice walk" and, apparently, she also did not go unnoticed. Before long, he phoned to ask her out on a date.

Within a year they were married. They told me recently they have been happily married ever since.

The Gazette reported in 1962 that salaries at the plant ranged from $1.61 to $2.95 an hour, with the average wage $1.81 per hour. Linda remembers making $216 a month at AMF Cycle, and that it seemed like a windfall at the time. The couple remember good working conditions, too.

Their earnings allowed them to build a house in southwest Little Rock, buying lumber and supplies a little at a time with cash from each paycheck. They lived in the house they built by hand for decades (a few years ago they moved to west Little Rock).

Linda warmly remembers the company bowling team and also how she had to get used to a clattering new communication technology called the Teletype machine. Richard's best memories were watching other employees drag racing up and down the road in souped-up cars.

Neither of them rode the bicycles. But they remember the excitement of being part of something new and important. In 1962 they had an opportunity to buy into the Blaylock family drapery business, and they left the bike factory.

UNION ACTION

On April 30, 1962, the Gazette's Roy Reed reported that an overflow crowd of union members had voted to accept a contract with no wage increase after a speech by union leader Jim Smith from Houston.

Smith told the packed hall that union leaders were convinced that the business was in such a perilous state (due to foreign competition) that it could not afford a pay increase, and that the AMF board had already decided to close the plant if the union went on strike.

Then he dropped what Reed termed a "bombshell": that union informants had learned Faubus supporters were trying to foment a strike so the factory would close -- so that Faubus could decry unionism in his next campaign. In subsequent reports, Faubus denied the charge, and Smith clarified that his information came from various sources.

The workers received this news in silence, Reed reported, and then they voted.

In January 1964, the union did strike, over complaints about promotions and job evaluation, and the Gazette reported that all but 10 to 15 of its 425 employees walked out for three days. That matter was resolved in binding arbitration, and the plant went back to work.

DECLINE AND DEPARTURE

By 1973 AMF Cycle had reached its peak, producing about a million bikes a year and employing about 1,200 people.

In just a few short years, however, the demand for bicycles drastically declined under the weight of a national economic malaise. The once busy production lines slowed, and the number of employees dwindled. On Tuesday, Oct. 14, 1980, then AMF plant manager Don Hays announced that the facility would close by the end of the year due to "economic considerations ... softness in the bicycle business and under utilization of the other two plants."

When AMF Cycle pulled up anchor and set sail for Olney, Ill., with the inventory and equipment, it sent a shock wave through the Little Rock business community. Approximately 30 plant managers were offered positions at other locations, but the remainder of the employees found themselves searching for jobs.

Little Rock's mayor at the time, Webster Hubbell, announced he was considering sending a delegation to the AMF Inc. headquarters to ask that AMF consider opening another plant at the same location. Hubbell's pleas went unheeded.

The Olney plant had focused on the manufacture of children's bikes and trikes. In Olney, the quality of the Roadmaster declined -- to the point that bike shops refused to work on them because they were not worth the time or effort to repair.

In the 1979 bicycling movie Breaking Away, the protagonist disdains Roadmasters as "junk."

In 1997 came one final ironic twist: AMF sold Roadmaster to Brunswick, once its mortal enemy in the bowling equipment industry. Two years later, Brunswick sold the Roadmaster division to Pacific Cycles -- which currently produces bicycles under the Roadmaster brand in Asia. Pacific Cycles also owns Schwinn, Mongoose and Iron Horse Bicycles, among other brands. A division of the Canadian corporation Dorel, it maintains offices in Olney, in the same building that once produced bicycles.

While AMF Roadmaster bikes are not at the top of every collector's must-have list, AMF did produce some elegant roadsters that can fetch $400 or more on eBay. The machines made in Little Rock were durable, inexpensive and available to the masses, drawing a new generation into recreational cycling.

That, in my humble opinion, is their legacy and their real crowning achievement.

Monty Cole, a cyclist and runner, is a past president of Bicycle Advocacy of Central Arkansas. Celia Storey contributed some information to this report.

ActiveStyle on 06/23/2014

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