The Tru-Test axe thread

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Nov 26, 2014
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Tru-Value hardware's line of axes. Not much info out there on them. A google search turned up an ad for Tru-Test in a 1972 Popular Science magazine, and there was a mention of them in a late-50s trade publication. And there is some talk around the WWW of them being made for Tru-Value by Collins, but I did not see any proof of this. The Tru-Value name was owned by none other than Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett(!) until 1962 when they were bought out and the name adopted by the buyer Cotter and Company. So there is a chance the Tru-Test name may have been used by Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett before 1962. A major manufacturer probably made the axes for both HS&B and Tru-Value through the decades.

This Tru-Test axe is from the estate of a 90-year-old man and looks like it has had an easy life.

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. . . So there is a chance the Tru-Test name may have been used by Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett before 1962. . .

I don't know about Tru-Test, but FWIW:
26171489253_b65abcc768_b.jpg


"1962 Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett & Co. was sold to John Cotter & Co. for the True Value Brand Name"


Bob
 
According to the USPTO, the "Tru-Test" trademark was used by Cotter & Company in the early 1960s (first used in commerce 7/10/1962, and filed 1963, and registered 1965) for a variety of products, such as paints, electric garden tools, etc. No mention of any previous use of "Tru-Test" except for a sewage sampler and gummed tape in the late 1940s.

So it looks like HSB&Co. was not involved with "Tru-Test", and also looks like Tru-Test axes are not older than the 1960s.


ImageAgentProxy

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:hnt6tq.2.22


The stamp on the axe shown in this thread looks like this version of the trademark, which was first used in the 1970s by Cotter & Co. for fertilizers, etc. :

ImageAgentProxy

http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4808:hnt6tq.2.18
 
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Tru-Value hardware's line of axes. Not much info out there on them. A google search turned up an ad for Tru-Test in a 1972 Popular Science magazine, and there was a mention of them in a late-50s trade publication...

Here's the link to that 1972 ad for a Tru-Test boy's axe ($4.97):
https://books.google.com/books?id=VvyLShXydNgC&lpg=PA185&ots=1gRsbqg4qE&dq=tru-test%20axe&pg=PA185#v=onepage&q&f=false


There evidently was a "Tru-Test Marketing and Merchandising" organization where John Cotter (founder of Cotter & Co.) worked during the 1940s. Perhaps Cotter & Co. decided to use the Tru-Test brand sometime after that company folded.


"...in 1942 [John Cotter] was offered a job by L.L. “Red” Oakes as a partner in the Tru-Test Marketing and Merchandising Organization... When Cotter joined Oakes, he expected the fifty wholesaler
members of Tru-Test to adopt the group buying and advertising concept. Cotter saw this as the salvation of the small hardware dealer. But Tru-Test did not develop as expected and John Cotter, after
five years, finally decided to establish his own dealer-owned low-cost wholesaling organization [Cotter and Company]."

"...The Company would be entirely owned by the retail hardware dealers who ordered by
mail from Cotter and Company. As a result, the owner-members would earn the profit that the old-line wholesalers kept for themselves. The lower prices were expected to be equal to approximately 10 percent of sales and would thus offset the discounts which the larger retailers were getting from the old-line, higher-cost wholesalers. The savings would go directly to the dealers. Cotter himself would simply be a hired manager with an operating contract. Cotter and Company would provide the dealer-member with the right goods at a low-cost and back this with direct-mail advertising. The dealer would do the rest."

"...In 1963, for example, Cotter and Company acquired
Hibbard, Spencer and Bartlett, a 100-year old Chicago hardware
wholesaler. This action added 400 new members and also gave
Cotter the True Value name which Hibbard had been using.
Other examples are the 1966 acquisition of Walter H. Allen Co.
of Dallas, a dealer-owned wholesaler which added 320 members,
and the 1968 acquisition of Great Western Hardware in Los
Angeles, also dealer-owned, which added another 250 members."


quotes from http://www.anbhf.org/jbl_2005/PDF/Cotter_John.pdf
 
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Here is a photo of a Tru-Test axe marking which an Ebay seller is claiming is made by Mann because it has an "M" mark, who knows where he got that info or how good it is, but it is an interesting variation on the marking.

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I found this walker’s tru test axe today, when I went to find information on it nothing but this thread came up. 28” 2lb axe. Unsharpened, basically untouch, one blade Knick.
 
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