| WRX reefers at the Kraft Cheese plant in Plymouth, Wis.
Plymouth, Wisconsin has long ties to the cheese industry. This view from the 1930s shows two Western Refrigerator Lines reefers at the loading dock of Plymouth's Kraft cheese plant. The nearer of the two reefers has a unique paint scheme, a hybrid between the original WRX lettering when the cars were delivered in 1929 and their lettering scheme in the 1940s. The car has the serif font of the original arched lettering scheme, but the lettering is laid out on the car like the later sans-serif scheme. Besides this image of WRX 9207, the only other image of a car in this scheme which I have seen is WRX 9175. The second car, partially visible in the photo, has the original arched lettering scheme of the WRX. The wall of the Kraft cheese factory says "Home of Pabst-Ett" … this cheese has an interesting history. As you can guess the cheese has ties to the Pabst Brewing Company of Milwaukee, Wis. With the advent of prohibition in the 1920s, the brewery needed to change course to keep afloat. In 1923 Pabst got into the cheese business by producing milk and cheese at Pabst Farms west of Milwaukee (formerly used to stable horses used to deliver beer) and aging the cheese in the ice cellars of the brewery. With the help of Pabst's marketing and sales forces, the cheese business was quite successful during prohibition. Pabst-ett, a processed whey cheese similar to Velveeta was the most popular of their products. Kraft-Phenix Cheese Company sued Pabst for patent infringement over their process; Kraft won the case in 1927 and entered into a royalty-free licensing agreement to produce Pabst-ett cheese. With end of prohibition in 1933 Pabst left the cheese business and sold their operations to Kraft. Kraft continued to produce Pabst-ett into the 1940s, so the exact date of this photo is uncertain. Here is another image of the Plymouth cheese factory, but with Kraft Cheese lettering where the "Home of Pabst-Ett" sign had been. |
Postcard, undated.
