Brothers Al and George Coleman created Coleman Motors in 1922 as a holding company with the intent of acquiring financial control of Plains Iron Works and the Plains Truck and Harleigh Holmes moved the plant back to Littleton.
Harleigh Holmes formed both the “Holmes Front Drive Company” and his associated “Holmes Motors Manufacturing Company” in 1916, based on his first patent for “fore-wheel-drive,” as he first called his front wheel drive design. “Harl” was already converting Model-T Ford trucks as early as 1916, and in fact, the front cover of Motor Mechanics Magazine for August, 1916 sported a full-page photograph of a Ford Model-T truck converted with a Holmes Front Wheel Drive. A very low volume of experimental conversions for Ford Model-T trucks and cars continued until Holmes developed his first Holmes Truck of purely his own design in 1919, that finnally went into production in 1920.
It was actually the summer of 1922 when Holmes approached the Plains Iron Works for financing, thus resulting in the “Holmes Truck” being re-branded as the “Pains Truck” and production being moved from Littleton, Colorado to Denver in the late summer or early Fall of that year. By May 1923, Plains Iron Works was in financial distress, and Holmes returned truck manufacturing operations to his original plant Littleton, while retaining the “Plains Truck” brand name, since it had been so heavily established through a strong advertising campaign the previous December.