Checker Motors: the Kalamazoo plant that built America's taxicab

Did you know the cab that meant “taxi” to most of America was built in Kalamazoo? When you picture an old yellow taxi from a movie, you are probably picturing a Checker. For nearly 60 years, those tough, boxy cabs rolled off an assembly line on Pitcher Street.

The company started as Checker Cab Manufacturing Co., formed by Morris Markin in 1922. Markin began in Chicago, then moved the work to Kalamazoo, where two empty car plants were waiting. The first Kalamazoo-built Checker, a Model H, came off the line on June 18, 1923. The famous shape arrived in the mid-1950s. That body, sold to taxi fleets and also to regular drivers as the Checker Marathon, barely changed for decades. Built like a tank, with room for a crowd, it became the cab you saw on city streets everywhere.

The last new Checker rolled out on July 12, 1982, and more than 225 workers lost their jobs. The plant did not close, though. For another 27 years it stamped out parts for General Motors and other automakers. Then the auto downturn caught up with it: the company filed for bankruptcy in January 2009, and Checker Motors went out of business for good in January 2010. That very last car survives, on display at the Gilmore Car Museum nearby.