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April 2024 #16297 Page #10
Wall Panel Technology, Part I: Wall Panels Become Components
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riven by the dire shortage of housing entering the 1950s, Levittown sparked a fervor for homes to be built like cars on assembly lines. Fortunately, there was a crop of returning veterans ready to oblige, whether by building whole houses or just parts of houses. William Levett delved into modular production and Jim Price tackled both modular and mobile homes, while both also grew their traditional product lines (see last month’s Wall Panel Technology Prequel: Birth of the Component Industry). All of this production, as well as that of their peers, created a drive for panelization which spilled over to the plate and machinery companies, and finally to component manufacturers, though with mixed results.
By Joe Kannapell
Cal Jureit, following the vision he embodied in the name he chose for his company, Automated Building Components, followed Levitt to the hotbed of growth in Southern California. In 1964, he set up “the largest in the world” component plant and located it within a 35-mile radius of the bulk of housing starts. One of his open-air buildings was to be devoted to wall panel production, but there is little evidence in this 1965 aerial photo, likely because California framers were and are the most formidable stick-frame force in the country. Karl The Losen, then and now the proprietor of Ridgway Roof Truss, ventured into the wall panel business to supply a nearby apartment job in Gainesville, Florida. At the time, it seemed that installing the huge banks of casement windows would be much more efficient to do in his plant. This resulted in the two-story balloon-framed assemblies highlighted here, which were tough to manhandle in the plant, and just as awkward to install in the field. This experience pointed out the challenge of doing “one-off” panel work that, to this day, few have mastered. A second challenge for Karl was the lack of a sufficient volume of repetitive work in his town of less than 100,000, prompting him to focus on trusses ever since. Continued next page
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