Sakichi Toyoda and Looms

Sakichi Toyoda was born in 1867 and from an early age was interested in invention and improvement. At the age of 24, he received his first patent for a loom, and over the next 30 years, he continued to innovate in the loom industry and was awarded 40 patents in his lifetime. He traveled across the world to study loom manufacturers and weaving mills as he looked for opportunities to improve his designs. In 1926 the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd company was incorporated and one of the objectives of the company was that it ‘shall be pursuing related invention and research’.  This broad objective of pursuing invention helped lead to the founding of the Toyota Motor Corporation since in the late 1920’s Sakichi’s son, Kiichiro Toyoda, was working on plans to develop an automobile.

The Start of Automobiles

In 1929 Kiichiro Toyoda traveled to Europe and the United States to investigate and learn more about automobile production. By this point, both Ford and General Motors had created assembly plants in Japan for their vehicles and the Japanese government was encouraging Japanese companies to develop automobile production. This led to the establishment of the Automotive Production Division of the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works company on September 1, 1933. Research continued and the company brought in people with automotive experience to get things started. In 1934 they produced their first engine and the Model A1 passenger car was ready in 1935.  In 1937 the name was changed to Toyota Motor Company for several reasons including the fact that toyoda means ‘fertile rice paddies’ and the company wanted to avoid being associated with farming.

Fast Forward to Today

Toyota continued to grow over the years and entered the American market in 1957. Today it has a total of 5 brands which are: Toyota, Hino, Lexus, Ranz, and Daihatsu. Based on the revenue it is the 31st largest company in the world and the second largest automaker.

InspectARide gives you the ability to easily setup your own checklists. Here is a video that shows how.

License plates (or registration plates) have been around for vehicles for over 100 years. Like most things, they started out being used in only some places with limited effectiveness, and over the years they became standardized and a part of every vehicle on the road.

Here are 10 interesting facts about license plates over the years.

1. France was the first country to introduce a ‘registration plate’ in 1893 with the passage of the Paris Police Ordinance.
2. The Netherlands was the first country to introduce a nationally registered license plate in 1898.
3. New York was the first US state to require automobiles to have license plates in 1901. These plates were made by the individual owners and were only required to have the owner’s initials clearly visible on the back of the vehicle.
4. Massachusetts became the first state to issue license plates beginning in 1903. These plates were numbered numerically starting with 1.
5. The earliest license plates were made of porcelain baked onto iron or were ceramic with no backing. This made them extremely fragile and easy to break.
6. A potato was the first graphic on a license plate in 1928 in the state of Iowa.
7. Many people collect license plates and rare vintage plates in good condition can sell for thousands of dollars.
8. Standardization of license plate size happened in 1957 when automobile manufacturers got together with governments and standards organizations. Before this, the size of license plates varied between jurisdictions (and in some cases within the same jurisdiction).
9. In 1979 a man in California got personalized plates for his car that read ‘NO PLATE’. Over the next several months he received over 2,500 notices of citations as he was receiving unpaid citations for any car that was designated as having ‘no plate’.
10. During World War II some plates were made from soybean-based fiberboard to conserve metal usage which was needed for war efforts. 

With the latest update to the InspectARide app, you now have the ability to collect an electronic signature as part of your inspection and it’s very easy to do. All you have to do is include a ‘Signature Line’ in your template and then simply tap on it and sign it. This feature is one we’ve had quite a few people ask for and we’re excited to get it in your hands! 

Ford Motor Company is one of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers and has played a critical part of the evolution of the automobile over the years. This post is going to take a look at some of its early years.

Founded by Henry Ford

The founder of the Ford Motor Company was Henry Ford who was born on his family’s farm in 1863 in Michigan. He was expected to take over the family farm but at the age of 16 left home to work as an apprentice machinist in Detroit. Over the next 20 years, he worked on steam engines, learned book keeping, and eventually was promoted to Chief Engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in 1893. In his spare time, he worked on his own projects specifically focusing on building a gasoline-powered horseless carriage. During this time he built the Ford Quadricycle and began looking at ways to improve it. In 1899 he resigned from the Edison Company to found the Detroit Automobile Company which was dissolved less than two years later. He then helped form the Henry Ford Company (later renamed the Cadillac Automobile Company) in late 1901 which he left the following year to form the Ford & Malcomson Ltd partnership. This partnership was reincorporated as the Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903.

Early Car Models

The first car produced by Ford was the Ford Model A which began production in 1903. The vehicle sold for a base price of $750 and had a top speed of 28 mph. They continued to improve on this first model and released new models over the next several years such as the Model B, Model C, Model K, Model S, and more. The Model T was introduced in 1908 and is the most important car in Ford’s history. The Model T was seen as the first affordable automobile and made owning a car possible for middle-class America. Due to innovations in the production process, Ford was able to manufacture automobiles much faster and cheaper than ever before and their sales reflected this. In 1909 production for the Model T was 10,666 and by 1913 this grew to 170,211. Overall, 16.5 million Model Ts were sold.

Moving Assembly Line

The introduction of the moving assembly line allowed Ford to grow quickly as they were able to produce cars significantly faster than ever before. This allowed Ford to decrease production time from 12.5 man-hours per vehicle to roughly 1.5 hours per vehicle. In fact, the cars were being produced so quickly that the drying of the paint became the bottleneck for production which led Ford to switch to only painting cars with Japan black as it was the only paint that would dry fast enough for their process. Ford continued to improve their process with the focus being on quicker production. This was hard on employees and led to high worker turn over. Ford responded by increasing worker pay to $5 a day and cutting shifts from nine hours to eight hours a day. Ford was actually criticized by Wall Street for its generous labor practices.

Much More to Talk About

There is so much more to talk about with Ford and we’ll cover it further in a future post.

InspectARide has two main report formats you can choose from which are the Standard and Compact formats. Here is a short video that talks about the differences between the two which will make it easier for you to decide which will work best for you.

William C. Durant is an important person in the history of some of the most well-known car brands and manufacturers in the world. Let’s take a quick look at how he had such as large impact.

Getting Started and the Creation of General Motors Company

Durant started a carriage company (Flint Road Cart Company) in 1886 which grew to the point where it was a $2M business selling carts around the world.  The business continued to grow and eventually, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company became the number one horse-drawn vehicle seller in the world. In 1904 Durant was brought in as the controlling investor in Buick, and in just a few years Buick became the top-producing automobile manufacturer in the US. In 1908 Durant formed the General Motors Company to be a holding company that would acquire existing automakers and other companies.

Forced Out

Within the first year General Motors acquired Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Cartercar, Elmore, Oakland (later became Pontiac) and by the end of 1910 had purchased a total of 30 companies. The company ran into some financial troubles as a result of all of the acquisitions which led to Durant being forced out by the corporation’s board.

Durant quickly teamed up with Louis Chevrolet (a Swiss race car driver) and started the Chevrolet Motor Company in 1911. The company got off to a good start, but Durant and Louis saw things differently which lead to Durant purchasing Louis’s shares of the company. By 1916, the company was profitable enough to allow Durant to repurchase a controlling interest in General Motors. This led to Durant being president of General Motors and Chevrolet being merged into the company as a separate division. His time in charge did not last long as in 1920 he lost control of General Motors to other shareholders.

Durant Motors and Afterward

In 1921 Durant started Durant Motors and quickly acquired companies with the goal of rivaling General Motors. This company did not bring the same success as he had with General Motors. The Wall Street Crash in 1929 and the Great Depression led to tough financial times for Durant. He lived the rest of his life on a pension provided by a few people on behalf of General Motors and passed away in 1947.

Writing up inspection reports takes time and in some cases, a lot of time. People who do inspections are always looking for ways to make the process faster and easier.

Here are 5 tips for saving time:

• Use Dropdown Lists – Typing takes time and to the extent that you can eliminate extra typing, you’ll save time. The best way to cut down on typing is to have common answers/responses in dropdown lists. Inserting an answer with the tap of the finger is much faster than having to type it out each time.
• Pre-Fill Answers – Using pre-filled answers is a great way to save time and is very helpful if you are inspecting the same vehicles over and over again. Instead of having to write out the basic info about the vehicle such as the VIN, make, model, etc, each time you do an inspection, pre-fill it in your checklist and save a few minutes on each inspection.
• Create Report While Inspecting – If you’re taking notes on paper while doing the inspection and typing them up later, then you have a lot of opportunities to save time. If you use a mobile device and create the report while inspecting you’ll cut out all the time that you currently spend typing up the report afterward from your handwritten notes.
• Use the Right Checklist – Using the right checklist makes a big difference. If you have a checklist that includes a bunch of information that isn’t relevant then you’ll waste time crossing it out or marking it ‘Not Applicable’.
• Use one Device – Being able to use a single device to record results, take pictures (and include them in your report), and then get the report where it needs to go saves time and hassle.

What about pictures?

There is no way around the fact that including pictures in your reports takes more time when creating the report than if you don’t include any.  However, they add a ton of value so most inspectors are willing to add a little time in order to get a better result. Pictures can actually save you time in the long run in that they help eliminate questions and cut down on follow-up. If you’re including pictures the key is to make sure you have an efficient way of taking them and getting them in your reports.

We’ve recently added a lot of resources to the support section of our website to make it easier for everyone to get the help they need! These additions include 25 more step-by-step How To documents and 10 more video tutorials.

You can find them here:

How-Tos – http://inspectaride.com/support/howto.php

Tutorials – http://inspectaride.com/support/tutorials.php

Of course, you can always give us a call at (888)695-7681 or email us at support@inspectaride.com if you need help, but it’s nice to have good resources available online!

Could you imagine buying an automobile without seat belts? It’s hard to believe that something we take for granted wasn’t always in every automobile. In fact, the earliest automobiles didn’t have seat belts at all and it wasn’t until the late 1950s that we first saw an auto manufacturer make them standard on their vehicles.

Below is a short timeline of some of the key events that helped make seat belts what they are today.

Mid-1800s – George Cayley is said to be the inventor of seat belts around this time.

1885 – Edward J. Claghorn is granted the first US patent (https://www.google.com/patents/US312085) for seat/safety belts. His design was not intended for automobiles.

1930s – Several US physicians install lap belts in their vehicles and start asking manufacturers to put them in new cars.

1950 – Nash offers seat belts as options in some of their vehicles.

1954 – The Sports Car Club of America requires lap belts for competing drivers.

1958 – Saab introduces seat belts as standard.

1958 – Nils Bohlin (Volvo’s first chief safety engineer) patents the first 3-point seatbelt.

1959 – Volvo makes the 3point seat belt standard in Sweden.

1968 – Seat belts are required in all new American vehicles

1970 – Victoria, Australia put the first seat belt law in place which required drivers and front-seat passengers to wear seat belts.

1984 – New York becomes the first US state to pass a law that required vehicle occupants to wear seat belts.