Hello,
I picked up 4 intermountain FMC Chemicals covered hoppers recently. Doing my research I thought they were used for agriculture fertilizer service. Checking their webpage again makes me doubt this now. Does anyone know if FMC Chemicals circa 1979 shipped agriculture related products in covered hoppers or did I waste my money on 4 nice looking covered hoppers?
Nate
There’s FMC industrial chemicals:
http://www.fmcchemicals.com/Sitemap/tabid/1499/Default.aspx
FMC Agricultural products:
and FMC lithium:
Whoops, I didn’t look far enough. I saw the industrial chemicals and not the Ag chemicals. Thank you for the help.
Nate
They appear to no longer have a history section on their website. FMC started in the late 1800s, if I remember correctly. Initinally FMC stood for Food Machinery Corporation, it seems like their initial product line included pumps as well as food processing equipment. Sometime in the early 1900s they started chemical manufacturing and changed their name to Food Machinery and Chemicals.
Over the next few decades, they added railcars, fire engines, streetsweepers, cranes, material handling systems, oil field equipment, tomato harvesters, and probably other things to their product lines. They eventually changed their official name to FMC. Then they started to sell or spin off their various lines until they became a chemical company.
FMC Agricultural Chemicals used to have some plants in some cities in the San Joaquin Valley. They were closed by the late 1980s. So I think it is safe to assume FMC made agricultural chemicals in the 1970s.
If you want to know if FMC had covered hoppers with their logo in the 1970s, go over to the Trains forum and ask there. There is someone there who will probably know.
Here are a few links to FMC spin-offs or companies that bought FMC product lines.
and add Motor Homes to the list.
When I was still able to do auto and truck repair, I had to work on these turkeys.
If you want one to park and never move for the mother-in-law to live in, probably oky.
Otherwise, pass.
I think I saw where a guy took one and added a BIG motor and did land-speed runs in it.