Has anyone actually seen one of these? I remember the funny-looking Caloric gas clothes dryer from the early 60s that was only sold by the gas company in my area of Georgia, but I don't know if Caloric was marketing a dryer when this washer was made. I wonder if the Caloric washer was sold by gas stove dealers who sold Caloric stoves and if it was more of a regional brand. It just seems a weird label to put on an automatic washer, but maybe it was sold, like the similar Beam-made Zenith automatic washer, by hardware and farm supply stores. Everyone was so desperate to both sell and buy automatic washers in this time period that this might have been something sold by smaller stores to get around the short supplies of brand name washers that were only available to authorized dealers who had to agree to display so many models from the whole line, etc.
POD 6/14/15 Caloric Automatic Washer
- Thread starter tomturbomatic
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My surmise is that this was for the LP dealers to complete their line...they had Caloric as their upscale stove brand (one of the local brands...Vesta/Brown/Sunray/Glenwood/...) was probably the lower-end line) and this let them complete their lineup with a matched washer/drier, and Servel for refrigerator. Presto...a complete line in the 50s. (Swap out the Preway dishwasher for the Servel refrigerator in the 60s).
Jamie, that makes sense. In the 80s, I was somewhere in the Annapolis/Eastern Shore area and saw a green Maytag Master in the window of an LP gas dealership. It could have been a similar situation.
Many LP gas customers were also on wells and the ability to wash many loads of laundry in one tub of water in a wringer washer would have had appeal in times when the wells ran low on water. I heard people talking in a rural hardware store in the late 70s about the well running low so the wife was going to switch from the automatic to the wringer. The washer and the rinse tubs could be filled slowly so as not to pull muddy water from the well bottom. The rinse tubs could be filled over a period of hours, if need be, then, after giving the well some time to recharge, the washer, but it had to be filled slowly, too, to avoid pulling muddy water into the water heater.[this post was last edited: 6/16/2015-06:02]
Many LP gas customers were also on wells and the ability to wash many loads of laundry in one tub of water in a wringer washer would have had appeal in times when the wells ran low on water. I heard people talking in a rural hardware store in the late 70s about the well running low so the wife was going to switch from the automatic to the wringer. The washer and the rinse tubs could be filled slowly so as not to pull muddy water from the well bottom. The rinse tubs could be filled over a period of hours, if need be, then, after giving the well some time to recharge, the washer, but it had to be filled slowly, too, to avoid pulling muddy water into the water heater.[this post was last edited: 6/16/2015-06:02]
