Gaylord: A Car, Another Car, a Company, a Town, and a Block of Wax

The Lemming recently learned that wax gets shipped by the gaylord. When someone asks for a gaylord of wax, they want an 11 pound slab of the stuff.

A pallet holds 200 gaylords, or 2,200 pounds of wax. That's a lot of wax. Probably more than you'll buy during a shopping trip to the local hobby shop.

The Lemming learned about that sort of gaylord while doing some analysis for Spiral Light Candle, and that's an example of shameless self-promotion. Also another topic.

After the Lemming got through crunching numbers about wax, candles, and related matters, an important question remained unanswered: What else does "gaylord" mean? Well, maybe not an "important" question: but an interesting one. From the Lemming's point of view.

After a little nosing around, the Lemming discovered that "gaylord" can mean quite a few things, including:

• A chemical company in Louisiana
  (Gaylord Chemical Corporation)
• Transportation
  • Bulk
    • A very large carton
      • One fills a pallet
      (B & C Plastics Ltd.)
    • Trade name for a standard-sized container
      • Corrugated
      • Large
      • Reusable
      • Used for shipping materials
      (Estes Express Lines)
    • A box
      • Pallet-sized
      • In which electronic scrap is shipped
        • Often shipped, that is
      (Global Investment Recovery, Inc.)
  • Personal
    • A kind of car they don't make any more
      • Manufactured from
        • 1910 to 1913
          (American Automobiles)
        • 1911 to 1912
          (Wikipedia)
        • 1955 to 1956
          (American Automobiles)
• A person's name
  • Given
  • Surname
  (Wikipedia)
• A town in Otsego County, Michigan
  (Gaylord, Otsego County

Those discordant dates for Gaylord cars aren't as daft as they may seem. The American Automobiles website says that the Gaylord Motor Car Company made roadsters and grand touring cars, starting about 1910. Then, in the '50s, Gaylord Car Ltd. made a two door coupe. Different folks were involved in the two companies: no big surprise, considering the decades separating them.

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• "One Tympanum, Two Tympana"
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