Given all the supply chain breakdowns of the last couple of years, I have often thought about Howard Tibbals who passed away earlier this year. I had reached out to him a couple of years ago and hoped to meet him, but I suspected it would be impossible during the lockdowns. Even more than a craftsman, Howard was a logistician and I hoped to learn from him about the amazing supply chain of the circus a century ago
Howard spent most of his adult life recreating a miniature model of the US circus during its Golden Age in the 1920s and 30s. The Ringling Museum, an hour’s drive from us, has a center which houses his collection, the largest in the world. Requiring over 3,800 square feet. it is a model of the circus under tent. With over 42,000 objects, it includes not only the big top, menagerie, and side show tents, but also 59 railroad cars, 54 wagons, and over 900 animals. Each tent and wagon is equipped exactly like the real circus from steam kettles in the cookhouse tent to the 7,000 folding chairs for the audience.
Here are some highlights from my research about the complexity of circus logistics back then
- During the 1920s and 1930s, the combined Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus required more than 100 rail cars to ferry 1300 workers and performers, 800 animals and their cages and equipment.
- The circus would travel up to 15,000 miles over the 7-8 month season and visit 150 towns.
- They would stay at some of the larger cities like Chicago and New York for a week or two, but most other towns they would only visit for a day. It was a cash-only business in those times – so they would start in the bigger cities and build up a cash cushion. Many circuses would go broke in the middle of the season. No digital payment or cash flow technology back then.
- The loading, unpacking, re-packing, travel etc required unbelievable precision. The evening performance ended at 10:30 p.m. but they had to be in the next town by 4 am so that the circus could start its town parade by 11 am. Required lots of parallel activities – tearing down and moving stuff to the train yard while the performance was still on-going. Cooking for everyone while the Big Tent was being set up. There was no HR or project management software.
- The local supply chains were just as precise. An order for a day for the humans was something on these lines of 90 gallons of fresh milk, 1,000 pounds of bread, 300 pounds of beef and pork, 250 dozen eggs and 300 pies of 4 varieties. For the animals, the order was along the lines of 5 tons of hay, 20 tons of straw, 50 bushels of oats, and 600 pounds of bran. Local vendors also delivered ice, water, coal, gas, kerosene etc. No supplier networks to manage all this. The most sophisticated communication tech was a telegraph.
- Flat cars and ingenious use of elephants and horses helped to load and unload the cages with animals, the tents, cooking equipment. The animals were all-weather – they could work though rain, snow and muddy grounds. They were also part of the entertainment. There were no robots or industrial equipment to do all that
- At the industry’s peak, the day the circus came ro town ranked with Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July: banks and businesses closed, schools got a day pass, and an entire town came out to watch the parade and see exotic animals and acrobats. The shows used large newspaper ads, heralds, courier booklets and small picture cards, but the bulk of the marketing was spent on colorful posters of all sizes and the cost of putting them up. There were no TV ads or social media.
- The planning process began months in advance of the actual show date, with early visitations to the town by contracting agents and the promotional staff who negotiated with local printers and glued thousands of posters in each town. Weather routinely played havoc with the plans. No spreadsheets or planning tools back then.
- According to an 1895 article in McClure's magazine, the U.S. Army sent a number of officers to study Barnum and Bailey's Circus for a week while it was in Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The report the officers sent back praised the complex logistical operation. I think today’s supply chain wizards should similarly study how the circus did what it did with so little tech.
I have seen Howard's collection a few times and can spend hours admiring his craft and also thinking of the amazing logistics of the circus with the primitive technology they had a century ago.
RIP, Howard.
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