Los Angeles County
Biographies
WILLIAM HINCKLE
HINCKLE, WILLIAM, Vice President and General Manager, Pacific Packing Company, Colton, California, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 26, 1877, the son of Charles F. Hinckle and Katherine E. (Chambers) Hinckle. He was married in 1903 and is the father of two children, Margaret E. Hinckle and William Hinckle, Jr.
Mr. Hinckle, who is a member of an old Philadelphia family, was educated in the schools of the Quaker City and prepared for college at Delancey School, a noted Philadelphia institution. In 1895 he entered the University of Pennsylvania, but was compelled to leave the following year owing to failing health, superinduced by overstudy.
Following his departure from college, Mr. Hinckle, on the advice of his physician, traveled to various parts of the country in search of health, and in 1900 visited Southern California. Locating at Riverside, California, he became interested in the citrus fruit industry and purchased several large tracts of land which he turned into orange and lemon groves. He has been actively interested in the fruit business from that time to date and has taken a prominent part in the introduction of new methods for the handling of the product.
In 1903 Mr. Hinckle became interested in the Orange Growers’ Cash Association at Redlands and assumed the office of General Manager. He conducted its affairs until 1910, when he sold his interest and took up the auction method of selling citrus fruits.
In 1911 Mr. Hinckle associated himself with J. W. Sutphen of Los Angeles, and together they organized the Pacific Packing Company, a corporation designed to establish a chain of packing houses in Southern California for the handling of citrus fruits. The shipping of this product has long been one of the chief problems of this, a leading industry of Southern California, and under the plan of Mr. Hinckle’s company much of the difficulty is overcome, the citrus growers being afforded facilities for packing their fruit and selling it at the point of production, thus eliminating the risk to the growers of shipping their fruits East without a definite price or sale being made until the car arrives at its destination.
The citrus industry of California represents from $150,000,000 to $200,000,000 capital invested, ten thousand growers are interested in the cultivation of the fruit and more than 100,000 persons depend on it for a livelihood. It is an enormous business, as many as 50,000 carloads of fruit being shipped in one year, and is growing in extent every year. Until the advent of the Pacific Fruit Packing Company, most of the fruit was shipped to the Eastern markets in refrigerator cars, but the growers were compelled to meet great losses, due to risks in transit of the fruit decaying, wreckage, congested market conditions upon arrival, and in addition to these, were under heavy expense in various other ways.
Through the application of the principles Mr. Hinckle and associates are working for, a large part of this liability is taken off the shoulders of the growers, as Eastern buyers assume these risks in procuring and paying for the citrus supply in California.
From the time he engaged in the fruit industry Mr. Hinckle has made a study of the business and has conducted numerous independent experiments, with the result that he has introduced more scientific methods of packing and has aided in many other ways in the advancement of the industry. Aside from his fruit interest, Mr. Hinckle is interested in several other enterprises.
Mr. Hinckle is a member of the University Club of Redlands, California, with which he has been connected for a number of years, and also belongs to the Riverside Country Club of Riverside, California, and the Los Angeles Athletic Club of Los Angeles.
Transcribed 7-5-10
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 484, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta.
1913.
© 2010 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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