Charles E. Wilkins, conducting
business under the name of the Wilkins Draying Company, truckportation
engineers of Sacramento, was born in Oakland, California, January 21, 1883, and
after attending grammar and high schools he entered upon a course of study in
the University of California at Berkeley. His first activity after starting in
business for himself at the age of twenty-one years was in connection with the
sale of wholesale produce. For two
years he was located on Eleventh street in Oakland, after which he was a real
estate salesman for six months. He then became a salesman for a wholesale
produce house, with which he remained for a year, and in February 1909 he came
to Sacramento as manager for the McLaughlin Draying Company, with which he was
associated for a year and a half. In 1912 he purchased the draying business of
Isaac Christie and since that time has steadily advanced, his success being
attributable to his thoroughness, reliability and progressive spirit. He began
with two horsedrawn outfits but started to motorize in 1916 and completed the
motorization of the plan in 1923. He now operates fifteen trucks and trailers
and does commercial draying for large corporations. He likewise takes contracts
for handling building material and is now laying the steel structure for the
new Sutter Club building. He constructed two miles of track for the Sacramento
Northern Railroad Company near Pittsburg, California, and he undertakes nothing
that he does not carry forward to successful completion.
Mr. Wilkins is active in civic
affairs and is keenly interested in aviation, his interest taking tangible form
along that line when he was a director of the Chamber of Commerce. He is now a
member of the Sacramento Airport Commission and was in charge of the dedication
of the city’s new municipal airport in April 1930. Through his efforts and the
activities of others the occasion was one of great success. Mr. Wilkins also
served as president of the Sacramento Aviation Club in 1927-28 and he belongs
to the Sacramento Exchange Club. Along fraternal lines he has connection with
Sacramento Lodge, No. 6, B.P.O.E., is a Scottish Rite Mason, a member of Ben
Ali Temple of Sacramento and the Shrine Chanters. His cooperation is a tangible
asset not only in fraternal affairs but in many projects which have to do with
the welfare and development of the municipality in which he lives.
Transcribed
by Debbie Walke Gramlick.
Source: Wooldridge, J.W. Major History of the
Sacramento Valley California, Vol. 2 pgs. 245-246. The Pioneer Historical
Publishing Co. Chicago 1931.
© 2005 Debbie Walke Gramlick.