Conveyor chain lubricant switch key to laundry equipment giant’s cost savings
When a Wisconsin-based commercial laundry equipment maker tests a citrus-based, environmentally friendly conveyor chain lubricant, it gets not only a cleaner conveying system, but also a 50 percent savings in material costs.
More than a century ago, two Milwaukeeans, Joseph and John Huebsch, launched a firm to make hosiery forms, collar stretchers, garment shapers, feather pillow renovating machines, handkerchief and sock ironers, and what was to be part of a multi-billion dollar industry—drying tumblers. A year later, two Ripon, Wis., hardware merchants, Joe Barlow and John Seelig, introduced a hand-operated washer and established Barlow and Seelig Manufacturing, what was later to become Speed Queen. After World War II, Norman McEwen invented the first UniMac washer-extractor capable of washing, rinsing, and extracting 60 to 90 pounds of laundry an hour. Cleaning was never the same again.