WRX reefers at the Kraft Cheese plant in Plymouth, Wis.
Plymouth, Wisconsin has
long ties to the cheese industry. This view from the 1930s shows two Western Refrigerator Lines
reefers at the loading dock of Plymouth's Kraft cheese
plant.
The nearer of the two reefers has a unique paint scheme, a hybrid
between the original WRX lettering when the cars were delivered in 1929
and their lettering scheme
in the 1940s. The car has the serif font of the original arched
lettering scheme, but the lettering is laid out on the car like the later
sans-serif scheme. Besides this image of WRX 9207, the only other
image of a car in this scheme which I have seen is WRX 9175.
The second car, partially visible in the photo, has the original arched
lettering scheme of the WRX.
The wall of the Kraft cheese factory says "Home of Pabst-Ett"
� this cheese has an interesting history. As you can guess the cheese
has ties to the Pabst Brewing Company
of Milwaukee, Wis. With the
advent of prohibition in the 1920s, the brewery needed to change course to
keep afloat. In 1923 Pabst got into the cheese business by producing milk
and cheese at Pabst Farms
west of Milwaukee (formerly used to stable horses used to deliver beer)
and aging the cheese in the ice cellars of the brewery. With the help of
Pabst's marketing and sales forces, the cheese business was quite
successful during prohibition.
Pabst-ett, a processed whey cheese similar to Velveeta
was the most popular of their products. Kraft-Phenix Cheese Company sued
Pabst for patent infringement over their process; Kraft won the case in
1927 and entered into a royalty-free licensing agreement to produce Pabst-ett
cheese. With end of prohibition in 1933 Pabst left the cheese business and
sold their operations to Kraft. Kraft continued to produce Pabst-ett into
the 1940s, so the exact date of this photo is uncertain.
Here is another
image of the Plymouth cheese factory, but with Kraft Cheese lettering
where the "Home of Pabst-Ett" sign had been. |