Word: plywood
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...gaily decorated siding under Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, railroad men saw something new in freight cars this week. It was the "Unicel," a gleaming white freight car made almost entirely of plywood. "This," said John I. Snyder, 40, chairman-president of the Pressed Steel Car Co., "is the first really new freight car built in the U.S. in half a century...
...quite that long. But Snyder's car is the most radical change in design since steel boxcars were first introduced in 1914. Though it is 30% lighter than a steel car, the plywood car has withstood three times as much pressure in "squeeze" (collision) tests between two cars. Thus it is not only cheaper to haul but could trim the big-$115 million in 1949-railroad bill for damage to freight...
...into Unicel, hoped to change their old habits, was betting that the new car would eventually revolutionize freight car building. In a rearming U.S., which would need all the steel and all the freight cars it could make, Snyder had one big fact on his side: plywood is not nearly as scarce as steel...
...practice, an excess profits tax spurs wasteful spending. In World War II, when 85? of every "excess" profit dollar "went to the Treasury anyway," no one paid much attention to padded expense accounts, high costs and wild spending on all kinds of hare-brained projects. "In effect," recalled U.S. Plywood's President Lawrence Ottinger, "the Government promised to throw $6 down any rathole where you threw...
Ottinger, who is so full of nervous energy that he seldom sits still for five minutes, is not letting U.S. Plywood rest on its spectacular growth. This week he announced the completion of a new $600,000 hardwood-veneer mill in the Belgian Congo. Next month, at a new $2,000,000 plant in Anderson, Calif., he will start production of a new plywood, "Novoply," whose exclusive U.S. rights he bought from its Swiss inventor. It is, says Ottinger, the first successful use of waste wood chips as a satisfactory center for plywood panels, will cut production costs so tremendously...