The Grumman Kurbmaster was the best known product of the aluminium walk-in step van business founded in Brooklyn after the Second World War. Built from the 1950s to 1990, it was one of a family of Kurb bodies, and the company behind it later became Morgan Olson.
Grumman Kurbmaster at a glance
| Company origin | J.B.E. Olson Corporation, Brooklyn, New York, founded 1946 |
|---|---|
| Idea | all-aluminium walk-in step van proposed by Walter Heingartner of Kinney Motors Chevrolet, Brooklyn |
| First attempt | Grumman Aircraft Engineering was to build it from 1939; shelved when the war began |
| Kurbmaster production | 1950s–1990 |
| Other Kurb models | Kurb Side, Kurb Van, Kurb Van King, Junior Kurbmaster |
| Michigan plant | Sturgis, bought in 1963 |
| Grumman era | trading as Grumman Olson; USPS contract over $1 billion in 1984 |
| Bankruptcy | 2001 |
| Owner since 2003 | JB Poindexter (JBPCO); renamed Morgan Olson in 2004 |
| Plants today | Sturgis, Michigan; Loudon, Tennessee (2015); Ringgold, Virginia (2020) |
Based on one source, the English Wikipedia article on Morgan Olson, the successor company; the article describes Grumman Olson step vans rather than a single surviving Kurbmaster record.
History of the Grumman Kurbmaster
An idea from a Chevrolet dealer
The first all-aluminium walk-in step van was the idea of Walter Heingartner, owner of Kinney Motors Chevrolet in Brooklyn. He was a friend of Jimmy Olson, then Commissioner of the New York State Liquor Authority. Olson had no truck experience, but he knew there were ten independent laundry companies in Brooklyn alone and saw a market, and he knew someone who could build the body: Jake Swirbul, one of Grumman’s founders. Grumman had never built commercial truck bodies, yet it agreed to go ahead, and Grumman Aircraft Engineering was scheduled to produce the vehicle from 1939. The war shelved the plan.
J.B.E. Olson of Brooklyn
After the war Olson and three partners set up the J.B.E. Olson Corporation on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, and the aluminium step van went into production. Over the following decades the company grew steadily. In 1963 it bought the plant at Sturgis, Michigan, which became its headquarters and remained the main factory.
The Grumman years
The business traded for decades as Grumman Olson, owned by Northrop Grumman. In 1984 it won the largest contract in its history, worth more than a billion dollars, to build mail trucks for the United States Postal Service — the vehicle that became the Grumman LLV. In early 2016 some 163,000 of those trucks were still in operation.
Decline and Morgan Olson
After changes of ownership in the 1990s Grumman Olson faced a shrinking market and declared bankruptcy in 2001. In 2003 it was bought by JB Poindexter, a parent company with sales over a billion dollars a year, which also owned Morgan Corp., then the largest maker of truck bodies in the United States. The company was renamed Morgan Olson in 2004. It still builds walk-in step vans, P31 delivery trucks, the C250 mail and parcel truck and cargo shelving, from plants in Sturgis, Loudon and Ringgold.
Design and features
- Aluminium body: light enough to carry a useful payload and resistant to rust, the reason the Kurb bodies lasted so long in delivery work.
- Walk-in layout: a flat floor and a step at the kerb let the driver walk into the cargo space instead of climbing behind a bulkhead.
- A family of Kurb models: the Kurbmaster was joined by the Kurb Side, Kurb Van, Kurb Van King and the smaller Junior Kurbmaster.
- Long production: the Kurbmaster was built from the 1950s to 1990, while the P-500/600/800 vans stayed in production from 1965 to 2001.
- Built for fleets: delivery companies, laundries and parcel carriers were the customers, and the USPS contract of 1984 showed how large that market could be.
Grumman Kurbmaster versions
- Kurbmaster: the main model, produced from the 1950s to 1990.
- Junior Kurbmaster: a smaller version of the same body.
- Kurb Side, Kurb Van and Kurb Van King: earlier and parallel Kurb models from the late 1940s onwards.
- P-500/600/800: built from 1965 to 2001 and sold only to UPS after 1980.
- Kubvan: a compact van of 1983–1985 on a Volkswagen chassis.
- Route Star: a 7,600–14,000 lb GVWR step van introduced in 1990 and still built by Morgan Olson.
The same company built the Grumman LLV mail truck for the USPS. More vehicles are in the Grumman collection.
Sources
- Morgan Olson, English Wikipedia: company history, model list, plants
