How It All Began...

THE HISTORY OF CHECKER MOTORS CORPORATION
By Rod Walton
(From Checker Headlights News Bulletin)

In 1908 a man named William A. Schaum produced an odd two-cylinder high-wheeler named the Seven Little Buffaloes. This car was the first link in a complicated chain eventually leading to the formation of Checker Motors Corporation in 1922. The ''Seven Little Buffaloes'' was a big enough seller to encourage Schaum to relocate into a larger factory. With the help of a group of investors, a new facility was found in Normal, NY   The company name was changed from the Deschaum Motor Car Co. to The De Schaum-Hornell Motor Car Co.

In 1910 the company moved again, this time to Ecorse, MI where they made new four and six-cylinder cars called Suburbans. In September 1911 the Deschaum-Hornell Co. became the Suburban Motor Car Corp. In 1912 a Mr. Palmer became involved with the corporation.

The Suburban Motor Car Co. became the Palmer Motor Car Co. and a new seven passenger six-cylinder touring sedan was manufactured in 1913. Not having a good dealer network, Palmer went into partnership with Partin cars thereby creating another new company called the Partin-Palmer Manufacturing Co. Two years later the Partin-Palmer Manufacturing Co. became the Commonwealth Motor Co. and moved to Joliet, IL in 1919. That is when the first links with Checker were formed.

American manufacturing boomed during this period, and so did the taxicab industry. There were many small operators of cabs during this time, but bigger companies, such as Checker Taxi of Chicago, soon bought out most of the ones in the Chicago area. Checker was buying up so many of these smaller cab companies that they soon found that their only rival was Yellow Cab of Chicago.