Do you have any idea where they might have moved to, or even if they still exist at all?
I tried looking up Pettibone-Mercury to see if they were still around, but the company has changed hands and names so many times that it's ridiculously confusing.
So far I've found three different webpages related to the company's history. The first is a short history of the company. However, it ends in 1998 and is, at least to me, vague on details. The second is the history of a different company that at one point bought Reliance-Mercury. However, because it is focused on the history of the other company, again it isn't very clear on what happened to R-M. The third is a news story about the history of a building that was Pettibone factory. However, again it is not clear on what happened to the company afterwards.
I did find a company called "Pettibone, LLC", but I'm not 100% sure it's the same company. Nevertheless, I'm considering contacting them with the hope that they might be able to point me in the correct direction. However, even if it is what remains of P-M, I don't know if they'll have any knowledge of their old products. What do you guys think?
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Sorry, I should have mentioned that the paint scheme on tug #1 is something the museum did after they acquired it. It's purely fanciful. It was actually donated to the museum by a locally headquartered major international corporation that used it with their aircraft operations. I did e-mail that company's history department, but, as I mentioned in my original post, they were not able to help.
Aside from the one data plate from the USAEC, there is nothing that indicates any of the tugs were former military or government. I'm not saying they were or weren't - just that so far I have no evidence either way.
The thought was actually that it might have been an ex-U.S. Navy tug because it had such a low silhouette, but according to a post I found online, it was never one of the models that the Navy used. (Actually, I just realized that the post I linked to was only about flight deck tractors, not all (i.e. land-based) U.S. Navy tugs.)
I did find an advertisement for a similar model, but I don't know how it can help me in any way.
In relation to tug #2. There's one other relevant forum post I found that I didn't include in my original post above. I realized it's relevant because I noticed the matching style data plate.
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I tried searching Google for manuals and I came up with what appears to be some good results, but the documents are not available online. Where would be the best place to go to find them.
Also, good suggestion about the LoC and other archives. I'll look into that.
I managed to snap a picture of tug #1's data plate today, so here it is:
Finally, I just wanted to say thank you to you guys for all the help. I really appreciate it.
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