COMPANY FOUNDING:
Wolk Transfer Company was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, over 100 years ago, beginning with horse-drawn carts.
It was a scrappy time in a scrappy town, as this incident from 1919 illustrates (wire service report):
Publication: The Daily Republican
Location: Monongahela, Pennsylvania
Issue Date: Thursday, December 11, 1919
(Note: The event in question happened in Minneapolis, but it gained national coverage)
The Wolks were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, at a time when Jews were widely discriminated against – and Minneapolis was, my father said, “the Capital of Anti-Semitism.”
Jews were not allowed in respectable professions, or even allowed professional training.
Working the margins of the trucking industry, my grandfather Isadore had brushes with the law, and during Prohibition:
[Isadore] pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy for transportation of intoxicating liquor. With the intention of minimizing that offense, he testified his company and several other transfer companies were doing work for some chemical company that had alcohol permits; that the chemical company unlawfully diverted the alcohol.
- From Wolk V. The United States
Isadore was in prison when my dad entered law school in 1939. But that is actually another story, IZZY & THE FURS
