The company marketed its oil burners nationwide. Louis, MO-based company that saw the potential of a clean-burning fuel like oil. LOUIS IN THE 30s International Heating Company (known today as Nordyne) was a St. ![]() As early as 1924, Domestic Engineering, an oil burning trade magazine, predicted that by 1930, there would be at least eight million oil burner installations for heating purposes. Oil-burning furnaces did not spring up overnight in the late 30s. Today NOCO Energy employs over 700 people in a number of business entities, totaling $150 million in annual sales. Its chairman emeritus, Don Newman, remembers, “He decided to peddle his oil burner service business because oil burners had many more controls than the coal-burning furnaces.”īy the time the younger Newman joined the business in 1954, there were eight employees. The company he founded is now known as NOCO Energy. Reginald Newman eventually switched from coal to selling oil-burning furnaces and kerosene heaters in the late 30s. “He borrowed a couple of hundred dollars, bought a truck, and started selling coal door to door in Buffalo (NY).” “My dad was uneducated and suffered from job losses at the end of the Depression,” said his son, Don. He now had a family to support, but he lacked any formal training, and jobs were scarce. His wife had just given birth to a son, Don, and had to quit her job as a schoolteacher. Newman was a young man with a young family in 1933. The company is now run by the fourth generation, Gregg and Scott Althoff, and Scott Carney. “On hot days, we would put big chunks of ice by the blower of the coal furnace and cool off the house,” he chuckled.Īs oil heat evolved into the popular mode of keeping homes warm, Wisconsin Fuel added oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel to its delivery schedule while it phased out coal delivery. The younger Althoff has fond memories of the coal furnaces of the time. The company would eventually get into installation and service of coal furnace stokers in the 50s. In the 1930s, Wisconsin Fuel concentrated on delivering coal and wood to customers with coal-burning and wood-burning stoves. Edward eventually talked his father into joining the company, along with family members John and Leon. ![]() The company was founded by Althoff’s father, Edward, in 1923. ![]() “My grandfather was very good with customers, but when the Cubs were in town, he would occasionally take me down to the game,” Althoff said.
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