In 1953, Dallas Smith and his wife Laura founded their first company in Indianapolis, Indiana. The company developed, owned, and operated a nationwide network of Automotive Processing Centers that provided new car pre-delivery and up-fit services for General Motors Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and the Chrysler Corporation.
The Automotive Processing Centers were located in Los Angeles, California, Portland, Oregon, Indianapolis, Indiana, Detroit, Michigan, and Phoenix, Arizona.
The Centers prepared, up-fitted, and delivered vehicles with “the highest quality showroom and performance condition” to the major OEMs’ dealers. The company grew to become the largest company in the world providing automotive up-fit, pre-delivery services to the major automobile manufacturers. The company was sold in 1969 to the Southern Pacific Railroad.
In 1960, Dallas Smith formed a trucking company at his pre-delivery up-fit center in Phoenix, Arizona to transport new General Motors and American Motors vehicles to auto dealers located in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Mexico, and Arizona. Over the next two decades, the transport company had extremely rapid growth in its business as millions of new cars were being delivered to the ever-exploding growth of the American Southwest. Ryder acquired the trucking company in 1984.
During the late 1960´s and 1970´s, Dallas Smith also had separate companies that owned and operated Ford Motor Company car dealerships; a national chain of retail car care centers that was acquired by Gulf Oil Corporation, and a trailer manufacturing business for totally enclosed, fully robotic trailers used to transport new Chrysler, Ford, Toyota, and Honda vehicles. Greyhound Corporation and the Burlington Northern Railroad acquired the trailer company in 1988.
In 1988, Dallas Smith invented the Axleless® Low-Floor™ Suspension to provide auto transporters with the ability to haul more vehicles per trip. The Axleless® Suspensions have now been on the road in almost every imaginable commercial vehicle application for more than 25 years.
For over 60 years, Dallas Smith remained as a pioneering leader in developing new product and service technologies for the automotive industry.
|
In 2009, Dallas Smith was awarded the prestigious SAE Henry Ford II Award for excellence in automotive engineering and innovations. |
Although Dallas and Laura Smith have since passed away, their entrepreneurial spirit continues today through Smith family owned and operated businesses, providing the transportation industry with creative innovations having the highest quality of safer, smarter, and easier ways for vehicles to move people and products.
Whether you want to transport people, or products, in the most efficient and economical way, we can provide the Low-Floor® vehicle technologies and unique resources to meet your specific needs.
100 + Patents Strong…and Growing
The Smith family’s portfolio of patents spans nearly 65 years of new and innovative technologies that have provided unique and powerful paths for the Company to be consistently positioned at the forefront of emerging and exciting business opportunities.
Over the years, DSC has established many successful partnerships with companies who license DSC’s patented technologies for their own proprietary development projects and businesses.
We welcome the opportunity to license our patented technologies, and to work closely with individual companies in developing their own proprietary products based on DSC’s intellectual property.