Light delivery bike

I've  never seen figures for what you're requesting. The best I could provide is a educated estimate of CCM's output for a given year, based of domestic industry data and the number of companies contributing data.

Does anyone have a phone number for someone that worked for CCM and might have this information?

These old guys should be intervied by someone with a tape recorder before they kick the bucket.

If there are any out here on the left coast, I could do it

Lawrence: I have spoken to many folks who worked there. None of them would have been privy to the kind of information you're seeking, including Tom Nease, who was company president for 10 years. The fact remains that there are no known corporate archives. Certainly the current owner of the CCM brand (Reebok & Canadian Tire) have no historical records that predate their taking over of the name.

That would make sense that the archives are not available. I would assume that with that many moves, change of hands, change of president (and related), and fires (and other destruction) that the paper work is very thin.

John, do you know if Reebok and Canadian Tire are two separate entity or if they are the same?

It's my understanding that Reebok owns the rights to the CCM brand name and Canadian Tire pays them a licencing fee for its use on their bicycles. 

Thanks John!

there must be some sort of an idea of how many bikes were made each year, how many were adult bikes, how many woman's bikes, and so on. There has to be some old guy that has some feeling for how many delivery bikes were made in a year.

Just because CCM went down 30 years ago doesn't mean there isn't some 70 or 80 year old man or woman that would have some answers to these questions.

I do reasearch on environmental issues all the time, it's just a matter of getting the right phone number, and you're away.

I think you're grasping at straws (OK, maybe spokes). Most people who worked on the lines wouldn't have a clue as to how many were being built. Upper management would be aware of the overall figures but probably not the breakdown. You'd have to find a scheduler to get the info you're after, but even then the degree of accuracy would be highly questionable, given the constant volume and mix changes from year to year.

If you tell me the year on your delivery bicycle, I can tell you how many domestic bicycles were built that year and give you an educated estimate of how many were CCMs. Then we can look at the models, estimate their relative popularity for the era and come up with a very rough estimate of the production run for delivery bicycles.

1937

I'm not so sure about that, the foreman would know, any sort of lead hand would also need to know this stuff. as well these guys shoot the breeze on their coffee brakes.

Not only am I trying to figure out how many were made and how many still exist, I'm thinking about making one and getting a motor for it.

All these things were was a full sized camel back that they stuck a carrier on. I've been trying to find out where thet got the ''T''s they used to make up the carrier with.

The answer to that came when a sharp eyed welder pointed out the ''ts'' were stamped out and welded at the CCM or another bike factory.

If any of you guys know where I can get another delivery bike or frame, let me know.

Foremen and lead hands are responsible for the day-to-day output. They could tell you the typical outpout for a day and maybe a typical production run, but I doubt they kept track of the of the number of production runs for any particular model and therefore wouldn't be capable of providing the annual output for a model.

Regardless, domestic output for 1937 was 63,927 bicycles from 4 manufacturers. CCM was the largest manufacturer by far and probably accounted for 80-90% of that production (~51,000 -57,000). Further, we know that men's bicycles accounted for 88% of sales for 1920-1934 .It's not unreasonable to assume it changed little by 1937, which takes eligible figures down to roughly 45,000 to 50,00 units.

The bulk of production during this period would have been taken up by the mainstream models such as the  Motorbike, Roadster and Sport models. Specialty bicycles such as the Flytes, racing models and Delivery bicycle would have been in the minority, probably 10-20% (i,e. 4,500-10.000 bicycles). If we assume as equal distribution among the specialty models, that would put annual production for 1937 at about 900-2000 units.

Please note that this is only an educated estimate. There is historical data that supports the estimates made in the 2nd paragraph, so the figures should be reasonable up to that point. However, beyond that your opinion on the splits is as good as mine, so the final figures could vary substantially, depending on your viewpoint. My figures are offered as a starting point for discussion.

Thanks, That was interesting.  There is a site dedicated to working bikes and I'm trying to learn as much as I can about them.

So who is T Mar?

Are you from Ontario, and how do you know so much about CCMs?

The reason I was asking is I ran into a CCM collector out here who told me he had an almost complete CCM collection.

One of my ambitions is to take a picture of, or download every model of CCM ever made, and put it up on some site, this one for example.