Swishy, you're not wrong again. If it wasn't for White purchasing Indiana, and effectively killing the chance of Cummins becoming a standard fit in the Indiana, it might have been a different story.
White had their own range of successful petrol engines, and they certainly weren't too keen on letting an opposition engine maker destroy their nice little earner.
As a result, White and Indiana buyers got the "option" of a Cummins after the 1932 takeover .. but you can bet your last dollar, White salespeople did everything they could, to discourage Cummins engine buyers.
However, I think the KW storyteller may be exaggerating a little, too. The Cummins engines were a hard sell .. and Kenworth would have been on the back foot, in specifying Cummins as standard in 1933.
To say it would have taken big balls, to settle on Cummins as standard fit, is an understatement.
Cummins diesels were much more expensive .. they required more costly maintenance when things went wrong .. and when gasoline was only a few cents a gallon .. fuel costs weren't even in the cost equation.
Tyre costs were probably double the fuel costs in those days.
Cummins engines sold like lead balloons, until the mid-1930's. There would be no Cummins engines today, if it were not for a family of altruistic bankers, by the name of Miller.
The Miller family were the financiers of Cummins Engines from 1920. They stuck with Clessie through disaster after disaster, as he tried to build and sell a marketable diesel .. and find the right market for it.
It wasn't until Clessie decided that heavy duty truck engines were the market to focus on .. and not until he produced the first H series engine .. did Cummins even look remotely successful.
The Miller family poured vast sums into Cummins on a regular basis .. purely because William G. Irwin, the banking family patriarch, believed in Clessie and his ideas.
It was 1937 before Cummins Engine Co even turned a profit .. and in that intervening 17 years, the Miller family had poured the staggering sum of $2,000,000 into Cummins, without seeing even a single cent of return.
The Cummins diesel story is one of a very painful birth, and a struggle to survive for many years. It wasn't until 1937 that automotive diesel engines finally reached an acceptance level that meant Cummins could turn a profit.
Cummins was no doubt helped, in the diesel acceptance field, by the outstanding success of the Caterpillar diesel, introduced in Sept 1931.
However, without the substantial financial backing of the Miller family, Cummins would have gone the way of many other promising engine builders .. disappeared without trace, for lack of finance for development.
