Wallover Blog

Keith Goodballet standing in front of a filter, holding activated earth in his hand.

In 1967, Crucible Steel came to Zack Wallover with another problem. According to an article in the 1976 number four issue of Exxon’s Oilways magazine, the question was, “We’re cleaning up our water so we can put it back into the river…and we’ve got a problem – what do we do with the slop oil?” The publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring made this concern all the more topical. Companies were encountering increasing pressure to clean up their processes, something we’ll talk about more next week.

As it happened, Zack Wallover and Ted Mengel had already been thinking about ways to repurpose “slop” oil. In an ideal scenario, they figured that they could reduce the amount of waste being put into the environment while also saving their customers money by recycling product. According to George “Hub” Marquis, who became Vice-President of Wallover in 1987 and who is also Zack Wallover’s son-in-law, Mengel had had some experience with this process when he worked at Freedom Oil, so he brought that knowledge to Zack and together, they started working on ideas.

As was the case throughout so much of Wallover’s history, the process of discovery began with a lot of experimentation. According, again, to the article in Oilways, Wallover and Mengel found that if you applied enough heat to oil it would separate the denser and thinner liquids. Not surprisingly, based on our article last week about Zack Wallover’s relationship to fire, this process focused on steam heat. Obviously oil is flammable, so fire would not have been a good idea anyway. From that point, Zack tried a centrifuge to separate the oils, and that worked better.

What Mengel brought to the process was Freedom Oil’s methodology of using soil to filter the oil. After boiling off the oil and treating it chemically, the liquid was filtered through activated earth (something like Fuller’s earth or bauxite). The process was hard, laborious, and not cost-effective. As Zack Wallover explained to Oilways Magazine, “…it took two pounds of earth to properly filter a gallon of oil, and the earth sold for 15 cents a pound, so we invested 30 cents for that portion of the process alone. And with virgin oil selling for 20 cents a gallon, our economics weren’t too encouraging.”

Wallover eventually was able to start “laundering” oil, and it was a great service to offer. It also was yet another product and service that differentiated Wallover Oil Company from other players in the industry. However, Zack Wallover and Ted Mengel would spend the next several years tinkering with the process and thinking of ways to make the process less labor-intensive and more cost-effective for the company. We will talk about that more in the coming weeks.

For the next couple of weeks, however, we are going to talk about the 1960s. Obviously the decade was one of the most momentous in American history, so it is worthwhile to put Wallover’s story back into a big picture, historical perspective. Next week, as mentioned above, we will talk about how the dialogue regarding the environment began to change in the 1960s, something that would impact Wallover, the oil industry, the steel industry, and many other industries as well.

Stay tuned!

For any business owner, a fear of fire can be a constant ghost haunting the brain. If a business burns down, it can be virtually impossible to start over again. Even if the insurance money covers most of the loss and even if many of the employees are willing to try again, a severe fire that ruins a company’s equipment and records can mark the end of that company’s existence. This was a fear that clearly was often on Zack Wallover’s mind during the 1960s.

According to George “Hub” Marquis, who began his tenure as president of Wallover in 1987, Zack’s fears about fire first became noticeable when he decided to buy a second building in East Liverpool. Zack assumed that if there was ever a fire at his company, there would be no turning back. Throughout the 1960s, the second building was improved upon and expanded to accommodate more space. The original building did not get the same treatment, oddly enough.

Sometimes, when a person is fearful about a particular subject, they need to spend all of their lives defending themselves about that fear. This easily could have happened to Zack Wallover. All of his fears about fire could have been dismissed as a silly way to expend energy, and his decision to build a “back-up” building could easily have become, in retrospect, a waste of money, or at least an expenditure that was made too early. As so often happened in Wallover’s history, however, the fates seemed to intercede.

The original Wallover building was situated next to a lumber yard, and the lumber yard ended up catching on fire. The fire was severe enough to essentially burn all of the lumber gathered there. The Wallover building was made of brick so it withstood the flames for the most part, but the side of the building closer to the lumberyard got scorched. One can almost hear Zack Wallover saying, “I told you so” as he wiped his brow in relief.

Once the remnants of the lumberyard were cleaned up, Zack decided to buy the acreage on which it had rested. He was, perhaps understandably, convinced that another fire would break out if the city replaced the previous lumberyard with a newer one. Even though the newer, more expanded building Zack had purchased as a “back-up plan” was available, Zack apparently refused to run the risk of any fire damage to the original building.

Zack’s fear of fire was not restricted to his business. According to Hub, who is Zack’s son-in-law, Zack also liked to inspect where his daughters were living to make sure those spaces were fireproof. When Hub and his wife got their first apartment, Zack, through his wife Marjean, communicated his fears that the windows did not make a good escape route in case of fire. From that point on, Zack’s children and spouses had to be particularly careful to find residences that were fireproof enough for Zack.

While all of this building expansion and land purchasing was going on, Zack was working on a new idea that would occupy him and his company for the next several years. We’ll talk more about that next week!

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James “Zack” Wallover (l), Ted Mengel (r)

Last week, we mentioned that in 1959, Zack Wallover had grown his company to the point where he was able to hire a vice-president. Zack’s decision to hire Arthur T. “Ted” Mengel would prove to be one of the best decisions of his career. Given the significant role Mengel played in the history of our company, we thought we’d focus on his biography today.

Born in 1922 in Rochester, Pennsylvania, Mengel graduated from high school in 1940, just as the Second World War was breaking out. Like Zack Wallover, Mengel responded to his country’s call, serving as a Naval Carrier Pilot during the war. In 1946, Mengel graduated from prestigious Penn State with a degree in petroleum engineering.

Before beginning to work in East Liverpool, Mengel worked with the Freedom Oil Company, which later became Valvoline. In those days, Crucible Steel would have regional salesmen in on Tuesday mornings. Everyone would wait in the lobby and the purchasing agent, Gabe Almassie, would choose who he would meet with that day. Zack, who was still new to the business, used these Tuesday mornings to pick the brains of his fellow salesmen, and that is how he met Ted Mengel. There isn’t a single moment recorded when the two men became friends, but it’s clear that over time, they developed a good understanding of each other.

Mengel was offered a promotion in the late 50s that woud have taken him away from the Beaver County area of Pennsylvania. It seems clear he did not want to leave, and at the same time Zack Wallover’s company was steadily growing and he knew he needed help. Wallover asked Mengel to join Wallover as a salesman. This was a little bit gutsy. Freedom Oil was a far larger company than Wallover, but home ties and perhaps the company’s potential drew Mengel to the opportunity.

Employees who worked with Zack Wallover and Ted Mengel recall that they eventually developed the perfect working partnership, and in fact, Mengel eventually became almost an honorary member of the Wallover family. He spent a lot of time working with Zack’s two sons-in-law, teaching them how to formulate and apply industrial lubricants. While Zack was your typical entrepreneur, coming up with new ideas and wanting to fulfill whatever customers asked, Mengel was often the one who found ways to make Wallover’s ideas (or the customer’s) become reality. Employees from that time remember Mengel saying, “Get the order and I’ll show you how to formulate the lubricant.”

This desire to please customers and experiment with new formulations is how Wallover Oil began to make a name for itself. With Zack Wallover’s entrepreneurial spirt and ability to quickly pick up new knowledge along with Ted Mengel’s expertise, Wallover began to evolve into the company we are today. We’ll have more on that story next week, so stay tuned!

At the time that Wallover Oil was beginning to grow, carbon steel was the big player in the steel industry. Although stainless steel had been developed around 1915, it was still expensive to produce.  In fact, this 1960 video called, “The New World of Stainless Steel,” reveals an industry just beginning to blossom. Companies that were manufacturing stainless steel wanted to have the flexibility to create different sheens and polishes as the steel was being rolled, but most big oil manufacturers felt this was too expensive to experiment with and too niche to really worry about. However, when Crucible Steel approached nearby Wallover Oil, Zack Wallover jumped on the opportunity.

In retrospect, the development of stainless steel rolling oils, still one of Wallover’s key product lines, was another example of history and events working in Wallover’s favor. Crucible was willing to accept the risks of experimentation as Wallover formulated different rolling oils using different additives. Even though running the rolling mill to test out these formulations was expensive, the value of the process was understood by all parties. Crucible benefitted because they were soon able to customize their rolled stainless steel products. For Wallover, experimentation helped them learn what worked and what did not. This ability to try different things was valuable to Wallover as they were really treading new ground in the industry.

It is interesting to note that in the 60s, when the first attempts at creating stainless steel rolling oils were being made, Wallover Oil did not have a state-of-the-art laboratory where all of these tests could be conducted. On the contrary, the Wallover lab at that time was quite crude. Nonetheless, Wallover and Mengel seemed to understand that if they could see a successful end to the experiment, it would mean a turning point for Wallover Oil. In fact, that is just what happened. Once the formulations were perfected for Crucible Oil, word got out that a small company in East Liverpool, Ohio could provide and customize rolling oils for stainless steel manufacturers. Wallover eventually became one of the top providers of stainless steel rolling oils, and it was this success, together with the news that this company was dedicated to strong customer service, that began to alter the company from a struggling, nearly defunct family business to a growing oil industry player once more.

Next week, we will talk a little bit more about Zack Wallover, offering insight into what he was like as a manager during the early years of Wallover’s new-found growth. Stay tuned!

As we have traced Wallover’s history, we have been able to define certain times as strong and certain times as years in which the company struggled. In the 1950s, there was a real mix, not just for Wallover but for the country at large. World War II was over but the Cold War had begun. The rising fear of nuclear warfare was keeping people around the world on edge. At the same time, the industrial boom that had begun during World War II continued to a great extent during the years after the war. Veterans who had returned home were re-entering the workforce and Americans were beginning to enjoy the prospects of building families in a time of relative peace and prosperity.

In East Liverpool, Ohio, there were efforts to renovate the Carnegie Public Library, one of the first libraries Andrew Carnegie helped support. However, the city was also hit hard by yet another blow to the ceramics industry. The main issue was the beginning of foreign competition (yes, even in the 1950s) in the ceramic industry. Ceramic manufacturers in China and Japan were able to produce products at a far lower price than domestic potteries. East Liverpool, despite its one-time status as the pottery capital of the United States, was simply no longer able to compete with these imported products.

As all of these changes were occurring on the world stage, Zack Wallover continued working on rebuilding his family’s company. As we discussed last week, Zack was able to win business from Crucible Steel because of a lucky twist of fate and resourcefulness. Zack was also aggressive in trying to find new customers to whom he could sell his products. For awhile, Wallover succeeded in providing hydraulic oils to the local pottery industry, but as one might imagine, this business decreased as the pottery industry floundered. Zack persevered, however, and continued to find new customers as the steel industry along the Ohio River began to prosper.

Perhaps one of the most important developments in Wallover’s history happened at the end of the 1950s. In 1959, Zack Wallover hired Ted Mengel, a petroleum engineer. Over the next several years, Mengel, working alongside Zack, would help breathe life into the company that once had been “all but buried.” There still would be tough times ahead, but in the 1960s, Wallover and Mengel discovered a new way to bring income into their now growing company. We’ll talk more about that next week!

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As we mentioned last week, Zack Wallover did not know much about his family’s business when he took the reigns of Wallover Oil in 1952. In fact, he knew so little that his wife confessed that “In the beginning, he didn’t know beans.” Given that, and the state in which the business was in 1952, how was Zack able to breathe new life into the struggling business?

As fate would have it, the answer primarily comes down to a resource called lanolin and a company called Crucible Steel.

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Crucible Steel, located in Midland, Pennsylvania, is just about 20 minutes away from East Liverpool. This geography worked in Wallover’s favor. Crucible Steel was in desperate need of lanolin in the early 1950s, but lanolin was virtually impossible to get a hold of because almost all of it was sent over for military use in the Korean conflict. When Zack received a call from Crucible asking if he had any lanolin, he was unaware that the oil was so hard to find. Zack made several calls, thumbing through his library of Thomas Register books. At first it looked like he wasn’t going to have any luck, but then things took a turn for the better. Zack happened upon a company called Malmstrom, located in New York. Malmstrom had just ended a relationship with a customer and happened to have 40 barrels of lanolin that they were looking to separate themselves from. According to Mike Cutrie’s account, “Zack returned to Crucible and informed the representative he had what they asked for. So impressed were the procurement officials there that they ‘put him in a car and sent him up to Pittsburgh to meet with the higher ups’ said Marjean.

Zack’s good luck would end up creating a “long tail” of good fortune to follow. Zack ingratiated himself with many people at Crucible and impressed them with his continued reliability and dedication.  Zack noted that, “‘As people left Crucible for other companies, we benefitted from those contacts.’”

Of course, it would take time for those relationships and the Wallover network to build. In the interim, Zack and his family had a tough go of it. In a 1976 article in Exxon’s Oilways Magazine, Zack noted, “I had a wife, two kids, and no income at all…but I had strong faith that the power who put this oil together in the first place would work things out.”

In that same 1976 article, Zack reflects on what the company was like when he first took over. “It was about this time that the company died…and the only reason it’s here today is because nobody ever got around to burying it.” As we mark our 150th Anniversary, we can reflect on the fact that nobody buried Wallover Oil. We can also reflect on how Zack Wallover breathed new life into the virtually dead company.

Next week, we’ll go deeper into the story of how Wallover truly began to flourish once again.

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Last week we talked about Zack Wallover’s time overseas fighting in World War II and how the second World War impacted East Liverpool, Ohio, as well as Wallover Oil Company. Zack’s story did not intersect with his family’s company immediately. When he returned home from the war, he returned to Pennsylvania and his wife Marjean. Zack worked at Mayer China in Beaver Falls for a few years and learned a lot about manufacturing during that time period. As we mentioned last week, however, Zack was not destined to stay there. On a trip to East Liverpool he saw an old building with his family’s name on it. The building was nothing like the thriving Wallover Oil Company of the early twentieth century. As Marjean noted for her grandson’s account, “There was a building with a dirt floor and the property.” Despite the poor state of affairs, Zack believed that owning his own company would make him a truly happy man. He borrowed some money from his boss and from his father and in 1952, Zack took the reigns at Wallover Oil.

In retrospect, the fact that Zack was able to resuscitate Wallover is quite amazing. Not only had the company suffered as the Great Depression and two world wars raged on, but Zack also had very little knowledge about what his family’s company was actually supposed to do. As Marjean said, “In the beginning he didn’t know beans. He’d make business calls on anything with a high smoke stack.”

Family stories note that Zack tried to make it seem like the company was much bigger than it was during these slow times. He would have other people answer the phone so calls could be transferred to him, making it seem like he was busy. And Zack was always learning. While waiting to make a sales call, Zack would talk to other sales people and learn all he could about the industry.

Zack had been promised that if his business didn’t work out, he could always return to Mayer China in Pennsylvania. He also told Marjean, who had just given birth to their third child, that if the company didn’t work out he could contemplate returning to the Marines. This second idea especially did not meet Marjean’s approval. Her response was, “You better make it work!”

As we celebrate our 150th Anniversary this year, you might guess that Zack did not have to return to Mayer China, nor did he have to return to the Marines. But how exactly did he bring his family’s company back from the brink of death? As it turned out, a couple of very lucky breaks were all it took to get the Wallover engine going. We’ll talk more about that next week!

While Zack Wallover was fighting for his country in Japan, the war was having a significant impact on the domestic front, from a national level down to individual cities like East Liverpool. According to OhioHistoryCentral.org, a total of 839,000 Ohioans fought in the second World War, which equated to approximately 12% of Ohio’s entire population. This means that if you lived in Ohio in the 1940s, you very probably knew someone who was fighting overseas. Of those Ohioans who left to fight in the war, about 23,000 did not return.

The men who went off to fight were not the only people affected by the turbulent World War. On the home front, citizens did what they could to help the war effort. This meant rationing so that the government could dedicate resources to the war effort. Many people planted “victory gardens,” and the work force shifted as women filled positions previously occupied by men.

As this directory of East Liverpool potteries shows, most factories closed before World War II or opened in the post-war years.  It is likely that many East Liverpool residents commuted about 18 minutes to Midland, Pennsylvania, where Crucible Steel was located. During World War II, Crucible, like many other steel plants, supplied important products for the war effort including bullet casings. It is not clear whether Wallover ever supplied lubricating fluids or other products to Crucible. Given the close proximity between the two companies, one would assume they would have pooled resources. However, as we mentioned last week, the 1940s were a low point for Wallover Oil. The collapse of the East Liverpool pottery industry during the Great Depression undoubtedly impacted Wallover significantly. The sudden death of Arthur “Fricke” Wallover along with the deployment of the young men of the Wallover family all contributed to the company’s hard times.

How hard did the times become for Wallover during the war years? By the time Zack visited East Liverpool in 1952, the building where Wallover had been headquartered was essentially abandoned. In fact, Zack did not seem, according to family stories, to really even be aware that his family had had this business for close to a century. As his wife Marjean is quoted as saying, “When he went down there, it was nothing.”

It’s hard to know whether the Wallover company would have fared better had Arthur Wallover not died so suddenly. History at this time seemed to be plotting against the company, however. Indeed, when Zack Wallover decided to try his hand at running his own company, there was very little of the company left. We’ll continue that part of the story next week!

During the early part of the 20th century, P.M. Wallover’s oldest son, R.A. Wallover, had been running the company. In the 1940s, his son, Arthur “Frick” Wallover took the reigns. Arthur’s brother, Edwin, did not seem to be involved in the business, but his son, James Irwin “Zack” Wallover would eventually play a pivotal role in the Wallover story.

We are very lucky to have a great history of Zack’s early years because of a story his grandson, Michael Cutri, wrote about him for school. While it would take a few decades for Zack’s own personal story to intersect with his family’s company, it is still interesting to focus on how the tumultuous early years of the last century impacted a single family spread out between eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

As we mentioned previously, Zack was born in 1921, a time when Wallover Oil and industry in general was flourishing. Born in Midland, Pennsylvania, Zack spent his middle school years participating in all sorts of activities. He worked in the coke plant at Crucible Steel during the summers (an experience that may have proven a resource of information in his later years). Zack also worked at a stable where he would get to ride the horses on weekends in exchange for his services. At Midland High School, Zack played baseball. Zack’s high school years paralleled the worst years of the Great Depression – 1935-1939.

After high school, Zach headed off to Washington and Jefferson College. There he studied engineering, a Wallover family tradition. Zack, like many young men of the time, prepared to servie his country in World War II, which had already begun in full force in Europe. Mike Cutri’s paper describes the following scene:

He made a trip to Canada, to join the British navy, but was told that he would need his father’s permission. When Zack asked his father, he said, “You had better get the hell back to school. When we join the war, I want to see a Wallover name listed beside everyone else’s, but until then you stay in school.” This was the only time that Zack hears his father swear.

Of course, America eventually was left with little choice but to join the war. On December 7, 1941, “the day that would live in infamy,” the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Zack remained in school until December of 1942, when he graduated with a degree in biology and pre-med. The day after his graduation ceremony, Zack was off to Marine boot camp at Paris Island.

Before heading off to the war front, Zack married a young Pennsylvania woman named Marjean Wilson. The urgency of war-time made every moment matter all the more. Zack soon after headed off to Pearl Harbor. Eventually Zack ended up at Iwo Jima, where he was wounded in the hip and lower back by shrapnel. Zack earned a bronze star in the battle but missed the last 18 days of fighting due to his injuries.

While Zack was fighting in Japan, his cousins, the sons of “Frick” Wallover, were also overseas. Tragically, Frick died unexpectedly. As Zack was making a name for himself in World War II, his family’s company was falling into ruin.

Lotus Ware, manufactured by KT&K of East Liverpool, Ohio

Last week, we talked about a time of great coming of age not only for Wallover Oil but also for East Liverpool, Ohio, where Wallover was situated. Everything seemed to be going right for the pottery industry in East Liverpool, and that meant business couldn’t help but grow as Wallover continued to provide the local potteries with the lubricating oils they needed to produce their products. People must have felt that there was nothing in the world that could slow down the pottery industry of East Liverpool. Even a world war had not gotten in the way of production.

It’s hard for us to imagine how people must have felt in October, 1929 as they watched the entire economic foundation of the country, and indeed of the world, crumble. In just four years, from 1929-1933, almost 15 million Americans lost their jobs. Ohio was certainly not immune to this economic disaster. According to Ohio History Central, “In Ohio, by 1933, more than forty percent of factory workers and sixty-seven percent of construction workers were unemployed. In 1932, Ohio’s unemployment rate for all residents reached 37.3 percent.” The scope of that kind of turmoil is hard to grasp, even in the wake of our recent “Great Recession.” The highest the unemployment rate went in Ohio during the last few years was just under 11%, and that seemed dastardly. Imagine devastation three times as high.

East Liverpool, which grew as the pottery industry grew, must have been hit particularly hard by the Great Depression. As potteries closed, entire families may have lost their income at one time. To get some inkling of the impact on East Liverpool, one can simply recount the story of KT&K.

The Greatest American Pottery

Knowles Taylor & Knowles was founded by Isaac Knowles in the 1870s in East Liverpool. According to the Museum of Ceramics article about the company, Knowles wanted to prove that American pottery could be the same level of quality as pottery and china from Europe. By the 1880s, KT&K had grown to the point where it had up to 8 kilns running at a time. In the 1890s, KT&K created a new kind of pottery called Lotus Ware. As the article from the Museum of Ceramics notes, “Lotus Ware was an immediate sensation. At the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Lotus Ware swept the competition, handily earning every single award in the fine porcelain categories. This kind of acclaim for American pottery was unprecedented, and stunned both the European and the American ceramics communities.”

How can you measure the true devastation of the Great Depression on little towns like East Liverpool, Ohio, and on individual businesses in those little towns?

By 1929, just 36 years after the World Expo, KT&K, formerly one of the most prosperous potteries in America, shuttered their doors.

Unfortunately we do not have any recorded history about how Wallover Oil was affected directly. We don’t have diary entries or financial records from this time period. However, it does not take a wizard to figure out that the hardships for the company must have been immense. Indeed, it would be a long time before things would return to the flourishing days of the early years.

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