In the late 1920s, Upper Darby, a western suburb of Philadelphia, was one of the most rapidly growing townships in Pennsylvania. The century-long boom of the region’s textile industries had given Upper Darby Township a major boost in commerce and employment. Amid this growth, Upper Darby resident Joseph Charles Taylor began running his real estate business in 1928.
After almost a decade, Taylor decided to expand his operations to include personal home and auto lines of insurance, as well as business insurance. During this period of expansion, Taylor also sat on the Board of many businesses, allowing him to build a vast network throughout the Philadelphia region. As a result, he established a commercial book of business insuring transportation, gas and utility companies and large contractors. On July 23, 1947, he officially registered the company as an operating business entity called “J.C. Taylor Company.”
Taylor continued to expand his successful business into the mid-1950s before deciding to sell the company. A local businesswoman bought the real estate side of the business with the original name “J.C. Taylor Company,” which she ran on her own until she retired in 1993. The insurance side of the business was sold to two local businessmen, Albert Hall and Robert Hamel. They called their company, “J.C. Taylor Inc.” and continued to run the insurance business going forward. In 1962, at the age of 61, Taylor passed away at his home in Haverford, PA.
By the early 1960s, J.C. Taylor Insurance had forged a strong relationship with the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA), headquartered in Hershey, PA. J.C. Taylor handled the AACA’s commercial insurance, offering liability coverage for all club operations, car shows, clubhouse activities and national events. This partnership presented a natural opportunity for J.C. Taylor to begin offering specialty auto insurance to the AACA’s 35,000+ members across the U.S. in the mid-1960s. J.C. Taylor’s decades-long partnership with the AACA is still thriving today.
It was also during the early 1960s that AACA members began planting the seeds of what is commonly known as collector car insurance today. Vehicles like Model Ts and Model As were already considered “antique,” but more and more of the expensive cars from the 1930s and 1940s were also becoming antique as each year passed. Insuring these vehicles with standard insurance was becoming very expensive for their owners. The members of the AACA believed those who drove their antique vehicles on a limited basis and took the extra steps to protect them should be rewarded with a reduced rate. This concept was eventually presented to Zurich Insurance and subsequently established as an offering. Interestingly, to avoid the cash value depreciation that most cars experience over time, Zurich offered an inland marine contract to preserve the value of the vehicle. A separate liability contract was also included with each policy.
As J.C. Taylor Insurance began offering antique auto insurance through Zurich to its personal lines customers, Hall and Hamel quickly realized they needed to devote more resources to truly specialize in this area and capitalize on what looked to be an emerging market. By the mid-1960s, they sought to find someone who could run this aspect of the business sooner rather than later. Around the same time, National Union Insurance Company merged with AIG, causing its Philadelphia office to close. Because of the merge, one of the branch managers at National Union would find himself out of a job. His name was Robert P. Wallace, and he had deep knowledge of the insurance industry. Because of the many connections that J.C. Taylor Insurance had made throughout the years, Hall and Hamel already knew Wallace and offered him a job running the antique car insurance side of their company.
Initially, J.C. Taylor’s antique auto insurance book of business was relatively small. The majority of customers lived locally in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, although in later years the program would expand to include the rest of the continental United States. In 1968, Hamel decided to retire and sell his 50% share of the business to Wallace and Ed Deegan, with Hall keeping his share of the other half. Within six months of this new arrangement, Hall died unexpectedly, leaving Wallace and Deegan as the new owners of J.C. Taylor Insurance.
By the middle of the 1970s, J.C. Taylor’s book of business was slow beginning to grow. Wallace decided it was time to ask his eldest son, Robert E. Wallace, known as Bob, to join him. Bob Wallace had spent the previous few years teaching at a high school and coaching football. He spent his early years at J.C. Taylor expanding his knowledge base of the commercial insurance industry. As the 1980s approached, J.C. Taylor finally received the boost it had been waiting for: the growth of cars that were eligible for antique insurance due to the exponential increase in car production in the post-war 1950s and 1960s. It was during this period that J.C. Taylor’s program really began to skyrocket.
Of course, much of J.C. Taylor’s success had roots planted back in the early 1970s when car shows, both local and national, began to take off in popularity. The AACA Eastern Fall Meet in Hershey, PA had grown to become one of the largest shows in the country, and starting in the early 1970s, J.C. Taylor was there with a booth, meeting customers face to face. J.C. Taylor was the first insurance company to set up a booth at the Hershey Fall Meet and the Fall Carlisle show. Geographically speaking, having its business located in southeastern Pennsylvania certainly helped J.C. Taylor become a constant fixture at these shows, but ask any longtime customer and they’ll tell you it was the connection with customers that really drove the success of the company. To this day, car show attendees still walk around carrying J.C. Taylor bags to hold their belongings. J.C. Taylor started to hand these out in the early 1970s, before anyone else did. Through the support of businesses like J.C. Taylor, interest in car shows has grown exponentially, and they can now be found all around the country, every weekend of the year.
By 1983, Robert P. Wallace had purchased the remaining shares of the business from Ed Deegan, becoming J.C Taylor’s first sole owner since Joseph Charles Taylor. By this time, the company had become the world’s largest underwriter of specialty auto insurance. By the turn of the century, the company also began insuring modified and street rod vehicles, helping drive further growth. When he passed away in 1996, Wallace left the business to his family, with his son, Robert E. Wallace, took over as president. He led the company’s successful acquisition by NSM Insurance Group, the nation’s leading specialty insurance provider, in 2021 — positioning J.C. Taylor to do even more to protect history.
