High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! White Motor Company was an American automobile and truck manufacturer, in existence from 1900 to 1981. The company also produced bicycles, roller skates, automatic lathes, and sewing machines. Before World War II, the company was based in Cleveland, Ohio. About 1898 Thomas White purchased a Locomobile steamer and he found that the only thing reliable about its boiler was its unreliability. So his son Rollin set out to improve on its design.