I have been touring Pettibone Manufacturing in Baraga, Michigan, with Kevin Walsh, president of the company. This is part three of my report of that visit.
What's the life span of a piece of their equipment?
"There are Cary-Lifts build in the 1960s that are still running," Kevin said. "They're like tanks. We get calls for parts. We still have the parts available, or we can upgrade them to a newer part they can use."
Local dealers generally can handle technical problems in the field, Kevin indicated. If necessary, Pettibone will send out a technician from the assembly plant, "or we take phone calls. Jerry here will talk them through it, or one of the fellows from the floor. We say we bleed yellow," the corporate color, Kevin said. "Everybody here cares."
Before we left his office, Jerry talked again about the challenge he faces on the floor - "to make sure we're efficient in our production," he said. "We want to keep improving productivity, to be as productive as possible." And he noted again that the switch from cell assembly to an assembly line made production much more efficient.
Kevin took me upstairs to meet some of Pettibone's engineers. One was chief engineer Ray McDonald, who has been with Pettibone two years "this time." He had worked here while going to college in the 1960s. "Worked for my father, also Ray McDonald, who was also the chief engineer here from 1953 to 1988. He started out with Latendresse Manufacturing."
I'm introduced to the younger fellow who comes into the room; he is blonde-headed, looks like he should play tight-end for somebody. Kevin has a conference call scheduled; he has to go do that. He leaves me with the two engineers.
The younger fellow is Phil Latendresse, grandson of the fellow who invented the Cary-Lift and sold manufacturing and marketing rights to Pettibone. It's not a case of nepotism, as Ray tells it.
"An engineer resigned and I had a position to fill," he said. "I turned on my computer one morning and there's a resume from Phil Latendresse. Phil was making his own way in the world. He worked at Oshkosh Truck in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the time. He'd learned of an opportunity to maybe come back home and had sent a resume."
"In 1952," Ray said, "Phil Latendresse hired Ray McDonald. Fifty years later, Ray McDonald hired Phil Latendresse."
Phil's father had worked at Pettibone until the early 1980s, when he left the company.
"Ray's grandfather and my great-grandfather cut steel here," Phil said. "How far back do you want to go? My great-grandfather worked here until he was eighty-five years old." Phil has a photo of the very first machine the company built, with his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and a great uncle sitting in the bucket of it.
When Phil had to step out of the room to take care of some business, Ray told me that patent rights for the Cary-Lift had been sold "with the provision that it be built here."
"But Kevin told me he can't find any evidence of that in the papers from the sale."
"Gentlemen shook hands back then," Ray said. "They would build it here as long as they could make money doing so."
Before bankruptcy troubles in the 1980s, Pettibone had been a force to be reckoned with, a large company that competed with the best of them. Now, what's left? Pettibone in Baraga. Another company in Superior, Wisconsin - it doesn't carry the Pettibone name. And there is a company that still sells parts for Pettibone equipment. And that's it - that's what's left of a once mighty company.
"We'd be in trouble today if we hadn't made these improvements," Ray said. "It's a good mind-set to have, constant improvement."
To be continued....
"Ray's grandfather and my great-grandfather cut steel here," Phil said. "How far back do you want to go? My great-grandfather worked here until he was eighty-five years old." Among all the fairly standard company talk, this quote really stands out. It speaks to the thousand-year-old European tradition of honest work by free men, of the apprenticeship system and the guild mentality of locally responsible, free associations. (That's probably romaticizing a bit; that's just how it struck me.)
Posted by: dave | September 28, 2004 at 02:45 PM
No, I don't think you're romanticizing too much. What I think you're hearing is something that comes in the nature of a small community, especially where jobs are hard to come by; and you're also hearing, maybe, pride in family and its sturdiness and stamina.
Posted by: Tom Montag | October 02, 2004 at 05:44 PM