The Birth Of CECO

This article was originally published in the March issue of COMPRESSORtech2. Subscribe for free to receive every issue in your mailbox or your inbox.

CECO began manufacturing its now ubiquitous compressor valves — in fact the company was formed — through a series of interesting events in the early 1960s. President and Chief Operating Officer Richard Hotze tells the story of how his father, Ernest Hotze, founded the company. Ernest worked as a salesman for Clark Brothers, which became part of Dresser Industries around the same time.

My father, Ernie, was trying to sell a two-cycle Clark engine into a Tennessee Gas facility in Louisiana that already had four-cycle Ingersoll Rand engines in it. They said, “Well look, Hotze, we like the two-cycle engine. We like the BMEP. The thing we’re most concerned about is not the engine side, it’s the compressor side. We’ve got all Ingersoll channel valves in here. We can buy your engine with poppet valves in the compressor cylinders, but we like the efficiency of channel valves. Will Clark Brothers build us an engine with Ingersoll’s style of channel valves?”

My father said, “I don’t know. Let me call you back.”

So he called his boss, and his boss said, “Hotze, just don’t come back without the order.”

He said, “Ok, I guess I’ve got to accept it.”

He accepted the order and sent it to the OEM in New York. They were concerned about stepping on Ingersoll-Rand’s toes. “No, either take the poppet valves or turn the order back in.” So he went back to Tennessee Gas and returned the order. He said, “I’m sorry, but we cannot supply the compressor valves like I told you we could.”