This Texas Company Is Stealing Michigan’s Iconic Truck

Texas has stolen a piece of Michigan’s automotive history.

They didn’t cross the state line under cover of darkness, and nobody broke into a Lansing museum with a tow truck. But a new company in Dallas has revived an iconic Michigan name, and attached it to a proposed $21,500 when they announced plans to build the truck in Texas.

Michigan created the company and built the reputation. Michigan gave the world Ransom E. Olds, the REO Speed Wagon, and one of the foundational names in American truck manufacturing.

A Texas company apparently found the name sitting unattended and called dibs.

Walk into almost any new car dealership today and you will quickly discover that something strange has happened to the American pickup truck. The machine that once hauled lumber, farm equipment, and weekend projects has become a luxury item.

Heated leather seats, enormous touchscreens, panoramic roofs, and elaborate driver-assistance systems are the norm. So are prices north of $60,000.

Somewhere along the way, the pickup stopped being a simple tool and became a rolling status symbol with a bed attached. We all know at least one guy who owns a lot more truck than he needs and has never hauled anything heavier than a bag of groceries.

There is now an entire culture built around modifying trucks for appearance rather than utility, from squatted suspensions and oversized wheels to neon lights and exhaust systems loud enough to announce their arrival three blocks away. It’s stupid.

The revived REO says it wants to go in the opposite direction.

Its proposed Runabout T4X would be a small, gasoline-powered, four-wheel-drive work truck with a starting price around $21,500. The company is promising physical buttons, mechanical controls, accessible parts, an available manual transmission, and a design intended to be repaired rather than discarded.

Before deciding whether Texas deserves to keep the name, though, it is worth remembering where REO came from.

The story begins with Ransom Eli Olds, one of the most important industrial pioneers Michigan ever produced. Olds is usually remembered as the man behind Oldsmobile, and for good reason. His curved-dash automobile helped prove that cars could be manufactured efficiently and sold to ordinary people instead of remaining expensive novelties for the wealthy.

Olds also developed an early progressive assembly system that contained many of the elements later associated with modern mass production. Henry Ford perfected the moving assembly line, but Olds was already demonstrating that automobiles could be built in volume before Ford made the process famous.

Then Olds lost control of the company carrying his name.

Olds Motor Works was backed by lumber magnate Samuel L. Smith, whose family controlled most of the stock. Olds served as vice president and general manager, but disagreements between him and the Smith family eventually became too severe to repair. In 1904, he was pushed out.

Most people would consider being forced from the company he created a respectable reason to retire wealthy and bitter.

But Olds started another car company. He initially called it the R.E. Olds Motor Car Company. His former company objected to the use of his own surname, so Olds shortened the new company’s name to his initials.

The company began building automobiles in Lansing in 1905. By 1907, REO reported millions of dollars in sales and ranked among the leading automobile manufacturers in the country. REO established a truck division in 1910. Five years later, it introduced the vehicle that would define its legacy.

The REO Speed Wagon was not exactly a pickup truck as Americans understand one today. It was a versatile commercial platform that could be adapted into delivery trucks, fire engines, buses, tow trucks, and other working vehicles. Farmers used them. Contractors bought them. Businesses built delivery fleets around them. Municipalities ordered specialized versions.

It was durable, practical and designed for people who needed a machine to accomplish something.

The name became so well known that, decades later, a group of Illinois musicians borrowed it for their band. Today, many Americans are more familiar with REO Speedwagon than the REO Speed Wagon, which is a little like remembering a tribute act while forgetting the person being honored.

For years, REO remained one of Michigan’s respected independent manufacturers. It built cars and trucks with a reputation for quality, but it was competing against companies growing at a scale few independent automakers could match. Ford expanded. General Motors became an empire. Chrysler emerged. The amount of money required to design, manufacture and distribute automobiles kept increasing.

REO struggled through an ambitious expansion and then the Great Depression. Ransom Olds briefly returned to help save the company, but passenger-car production ended in 1936. REO concentrated on trucks, and military contracts during World War II provided a temporary revival.

REO’s vehicle operation was sold in 1954 and became part of White Motor Company several years later. White combined REO with Diamond T in 1967, creating Diamond Reo Trucks. Diamond Reo filed for bankruptcy in 1975.

After roughly seven decades, the REO name disappeared from American vehicle manufacturing. Now it is coming back, although it’s taking a detour through Dallas.

The modern REO Industries is not a surviving branch of the Lansing company. It is a new Texas corporation led by founder and chief executive Zach De Bernardi. The company acquired the dormant REO trademark and is using the historic name for an entirely new vehicle program.

REO calls the truck an “Ameri-Kei,” drawing inspiration from the compact Japanese kei trucks that manage to be useful without requiring their owners to climb into the cab like they are boarding construction equipment.

The T4X is supposed to be a two-seat, two-door work truck with a steel drop-side flatbed. REO says it is targeting body-on-frame construction, a naturally aspirated four-cylinder gasoline engine, mechanical four-wheel drive and either a six-speed manual or automatic transmission.

The company is also promising no subscription fees. No software-locked features. No need to dig through six menus just to turn down the heat.

That may sound old-fashioned, but most ordinary people are not asking for their vehicle to feel like the cockpit of a spaceship. They want to turn a key, press a button, and get from Point A to Point B without the dashboard demanding an update or asking them to create an account.

REO says its panels will be removable with ordinary tools, and replacement parts will not be digitally tied to a single vehicle. In theory, that means an owner or local mechanic could fix the truck without first requesting permission from a computer somewhere in California.

In other words, REO wants to build a truck that behaves like a truck.

The target starting price is $21,500. The company also plans a five-seat crew cab and a compact sport-utility vehicle using the same basic platform.

It is not difficult to understand why people are interested. Hell, even I’m interested.

Construction workers do not need ventilated leather seats. Small-business owners care more about repair costs than animated dashboard graphics. Someone hauling mulch on Saturday does not need a truck large enough to cover the entire road.

Many buyers simply want an affordable vehicle with a bed, four-wheel drive and enough mechanical honesty to survive beyond the loan.

That was the kind of market Ransom Olds understood. He helped prove that automobiles did not have to remain possessions for wealthy hobbyists. The modern REO is making a similar argument about pickup trucks.

REO is accepting refundable $25 reservations, but the final production design has not been publicly revealed. The company says it plans to show production models in late 2026, build and test pilot vehicles in 2027, open its order system in 2028, and begin deliveries in late 2028 or 2029.

Those are goals, not guarantees.

Designing a truck is difficult. Building thousands of reliable, federally compliant trucks at a profit is much harder. REO still needs suppliers, engineers, crash testing, emissions certification, manufacturing equipment, service infrastructure, and enough money to survive the years between a popular announcement and actual production.

But if the company succeeds, Michiganders will probably forgive Texas for wandering off with the family name.

For now, the revived REO remains an appealing promise attached to one of Michigan’s forgotten industrial giants. It has a historic name, a clever pitch, and a long road to get to a finished truck.

But if it reaches production, it will prove that the affordable American pickup was never dead. Manufacturers simply stopped building it.