Fort Smith goods can be found outside state

By Thomas Saccente Times Recordtsaccente@swtimes.com

The products made by manufacturers in Fort Smith tend to travel far beyond the local area.

Fort Smith is home to a variety of manufacturers that make a vast array of products for people to purchase. However, these products are not confined to being sold in the local area, but rather, all across the country. Certain companies even make goods that can be found around the world.

Baldor Electric Co.

One such company is Baldor Electric Co. Randy Colip, the executive vice president of sales at Baldor, said the company makes industrial electric motors.

"... And I say industrial because there's an awful lot of motors that you have in your house," Colip said. "I think the average home has like 76 motors. You're not going to find a Baldor motor in your house. Where you're going to find Baldor motors are in industrial applications. Planters Peanuts in Fort Smith is going to have motors all over the place that run machinery, that run conveyors, that run pumps, that run processes. Those are the motors that we'll make."

Baldor makes about 5,000 motors a day in Fort Smith, Colip said. The company has district offices that sell its products to distributors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

"The distributor in Fort Smith, you've got Motion Industries, you've got Evans Electric ... over in Van Buren you've got Robertson Electric," Colip said. "Those are the people who will sell our product to the end user. They'll sell them to the Planters, to the Gerbers, to the Dixie Cups, to those people. They are the ones that actually sell them to the end user. We do not sell them to the end user ourselves."

Colip said Baldor's customer base is worldwide, although it mainly sells products to the North American market because that is considered a National Electrical Manufacturer's Association (NEMA) market. This includes the United States, Canada and Mexico.

"They give a parameters of dimensions that you have to operate under," Colip said. "Once you get outside of that North America, you start getting more influence from IEC, which is the International Electric Code. ... We don't manufacture IEC, so it's mainly the NEMA, and ... North America is the main market for it."

However, Colip said Baldor sells around the world because many people produce machinery that ship into the United States and they have to put NEMA motors on them before they will ship them in.

Colip said about 90 percent of Baldor's total market is North America while the remaining 10 percent is outside of it. The areas to which Baldor ships outside of North America mostly include Europe and the Middle East. The European countries to which Baldor ships products include Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, France and Italy. Saudi Arabia is the main Middle Eastern country to which Baldor ships.

In Donald Naugle’s 17 years at Baldor Electric Co., he has seen technology change the job into a more modern, safe work environment, he said.

Naugle is a maintenance tooling technician — he works on the wiring of the industrial electric motors that Baldor (soon to be ABB) produces. Before that, he worked on the floor as a production worker until the tooling technician position became available. It is fulfilling because he helps improve the
product, he said.

“It’s different every day,” he said, noting that he often works with different people each day.

He often has to learn on the job, he said. Naugle was born in Ohio and raised in Alabama, but has lived in Fort Smith since he was 19 years old.

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QualServ Solutions

Another Fort Smith manufacturer with an international presence is QualServ Solutions, a Middleby company. QualServ Solutions President E.J. Morrow said the company produces custom millwork and refrigeration, stainless fabrication, metal cabinets and counters, seating, decor and merchandising carts and kiosks, among other items. It also provide certain services, such as project management, design and engineering, procurement, logistics and inventory management and installation and field services.

Morrow said among QualServ's current customers are Dunkin' Donuts, Papa John's Pizza, Burger King, Arby's and Walmart.

"We work on global chains and emerging chains, and we provide them something we call 'Store-in-a-Box,'" Morrow said. "What we do is we take all the equipment, the fixturing and we bring it to them and then we do the installation of it."

QualServ handles the distribution of its products itself, Morrow said. The company serves on both national and international levels.

"Wherever there's a Walmart, we supply them," Morrow said. "Wherever there's a Papa John's Pizza, wherever there's a Dunkin' Donuts ... so all over the country at every state, Hawaii, Alaska. We do the Middle East. We do South America. We do Europe."

When asked if the regions to which QualServ products have been shipped and installed have changed since the company was founded in 1979 as Air Systems, Morrow had this to say:

"I think the international expansion has been oncoming in the last five or six years," Morrow said. "We do more international because domestic chains are expanding internationally, so you have to have that capability to be able to support them, which we did."

Acme Brick Co.

Although Acme Brick Co. does not ship or sell its products internationally, it still covers significant ground in the United States. Lynn Ramsey, the Acme Brick Company plant manager in Fort Smith, said the company locally produces bricks in three different sizes. These are called modular size, king size and estate size.

"Modular is usually going to be the type that you will see on more of a commercial type application, hospitals, libraries, things of that nature," Ramsey said. "They're seven and five-eighths inches in length, two and a quarter inches tall. The king-size are nine and five-eighths and two and five-eighths tall, and those are primarily more residential. And the estates are going to be the nine and five-eighths inches long and three and five-eighths inches tall, and those are also primarily residential with some commercial application."

Ramsey said Acme Brick also sells the products it manufactures, with the company having a sales location at 2001 Old Greenwood Rd. in Fort Smith. Since Acme Brick is a building supply company, tile and other products are also available through its sales locations.

Acme Brick in Fort Smith ships its bricks in all states surrounding Arkansas, Ramsey said. This includes Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.

"We've also shipped brick as far as Chicago, Ill. and to Nebraska and South Dakota area," Ramsey said. "We also ship as far south in Texas as Houston and San Antonio. We actually have had one job that's gone up in Pensacola, Fla."

Ramsey said Acme Brick has numerous architects that will purchase its modular materials in a variety of areas.

"... But the majority of the bricks that are shipped are going to be primarily residential, and those are purchased by home buyers and home builders," Ramsey said.

Times Record reporter Alex Golden contributed to this article.

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