The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper The Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
Current Temperature
45°F
Current Conditions
Scattered clouds
View complete weather report
Subscribe now

Then and Now: Brown Metal Works

Circa 1935 - Outside Brown Metal Works at Grant Street and East Sprague Avenue, sits one of the all-aluminum airplane designed by Thoburn C. Brown and built by Thoburn and his older brother William R. Brown in the early 1930s. “We were tinsmiths,” said Thoburn Brown in 1972. “Its the only way we knew how to build.” The first plane was destroyed in a fire and this one, and possibly another, were sold off. The aircraft company never took off but the business built truck trailers, ore cars and bus coaches for many years. (Northwest Room/Spokane Public Library / SR)
Circa 1935 - Outside Brown Metal Works at Grant Street and East Sprague Avenue, sits one of the all-aluminum airplane designed by Thoburn C. Brown and built by Thoburn and his older brother William R. Brown in the early 1930s. “We were tinsmiths,” said Thoburn Brown in 1972. “Its the only way we knew how to build.” The first plane was destroyed in a fire and this one, and possibly another, were sold off. The aircraft company never took off but the business built truck trailers, ore cars and bus coaches for many years. (Northwest Room/Spokane Public Library / SR)
By Jesse Tinsley jesset@spokesman.com(509) 459-5378

Thoburn C. Brown, born in 1907, was an inventor who knew his way around a pair of tin snips. Thoburn and his older brother William, born in 1902, attended Lewis and Clark High School. By 1929, both worked in their father’s business, Brown Metal Works.

At night, the two young men tinkered with airplanes and in 1930 rolled out Thoburn’s first design, an all-aluminum, high-wing plane called the Metalark. Legendary Spokane pilot Nick Mamer made the first flight.

“We were tinsmiths,” Thoburn told The Spokesman-Review years later. “That’s the only way we knew how to build.”

With a few exceptions, airplanes before 1930 were made of wood and fabric. Metal was thought to be too heavy, too prone to buckling and susceptible to corrosion.

Thoburn and William called their venture the Brown Metalplane Company. They built two more planes, both sporty, low-wing, open-cockpit designs. The polished aluminum was dazzling in the era of wood and fabric airplanes.

Unfortunately, the company never got off the ground during the Depression.

But the two industrious brothers pivoted to land transportation and began building dump trucks, freight trailers, ore cars for mining and sleek modern buses, including some of the first rear-engine long-haul buses.

The family business, owned by the brothers and two sisters, was now called Brown Industries. When World War II broke out, the company produced aluminum parts for Boeing and other manufacturers.

In the postwar era, they focused on aluminum trailers for long haul trucking. Brown Trailer, at 6328 E. Utah Ave., and factories in the midwest and eastern states, merged into Clark Equipment Company in 1958, with Thoburn Brown in management.

After a few years in the midwest, Thoburn returned to Spokane and started Comet Corporation, which would manufacture a variety of trailers, delivery trucks, freezers and other equipment.

William Brown died in 1994. Thoburn died in 2002.

Competition made the trailer business less profitable, and in 1995 Comet was bought by Spokane Alloy Trailers, which was started by former Comet employees. Reliance Trailer, from Stockton, California, bought Alloy Trailers out of bankruptcy in 1998, then shut down Spokane operations around 2010.