It’s possible, during the early 20th century, that someone grilling hamburgers in their back yard was using charcoal that was once part of the Model T car parked in their front yard. The story goes like this:
One of the most unusual—and least-known—facts about Henry Ford’s Model T is that it helped create what became the Kingsford charcoal briquette. Henry Ford was so famous as a car maker then, and now, that he is very seldom mentioned as the father of the briquette industry.
When Ford was building millions of Model Ts, each car required a significant amount of wood for parts such as wheels, floorboards, steering wheels and body components. The manufacturing process generated huge amounts of scrap wood.
Rather than waste it, Henry Ford developed a way to convert the scraps into charcoal briquettes. The product was originally sold as “Ford Charcoal” and later became the familiar Kingsford brand that still dominates backyard barbecues today.
Kingsford is now owned by the Clorox Company and remains the leading manufacturer of charcoal in the United States, with 80% market share. More than 1 million tons of wood scraps are converted into charcoal briquettes annually.
Another little-known Model T fact is that the car was designed to run not only on gasoline but also on ethanol (grain alcohol). Ford believed farm-produced ethanol could become a major automotive fuel, decades before modern discussions about renewable fuels.
Finally, one of the more colorful quotes from Henry Ford came in 1918, when half of the cars in the United States were Model Ts. In his autobiography, Ford reported that at one time he told his management team, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”
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