E D Etnyre & Co Celebrates 100 Years

Oct. 1, 1999
BUILDING truck tanks and tank trailers for nearly 100 years has paved the way to success for the E D Etnyre & Co in Oregon, Illinois.The company builds

BUILDING truck tanks and tank trailers for nearly 100 years has paved the way to success for the E D Etnyre & Co in Oregon, Illinois.

The company builds insulated steel and aluminum hot material transports with capacities from 7,000 to 13,500 gallons. Etnyre Trailer Company, a subsidiary of E D Etnyre, builds platform trailers, folding gooseneck, and removable gooseneck trailers.

The lowbeds are built primarily to haul construction equipment and paving machinery. They are equipped with tandems, tridems, or multi-axles and have capacities ranging from 10 to 100 tons.

Throughout its history, Etnyre has been a family-owned corporation specializing in building tank trucks and trailers for hauling bituminous liquid products. Etnyre Trailer Company recently introduced the Blackhawk, which is a new line of lowbed platform trailers.

One of the company's primary products, asphalt distributor tanks, evolved from the horse-drawn water sprinkler wagons built by Edward D Etnyre, the company founder. Etnyre built the products needed to build better roads as the nation's infrastructure grew with the automobile industry.

In the late 1800s, Etnyre moved from tanker wagons that supplied water for steam-driven threshing machines to tankers that could sprinkle water on dirt roads to reduce dust.

As road surfaces improved, oil was applied to road surfaces to reduce road dust. Etnyre's road oiler took advantage of this change from water sprinkler tank wagons.

Touring Car Builder In the early 1900s, Etnyre was one of many manufacturers that built horseless carriages and touring cars. In 1906, the company produced three horseless carriages.

Etnyre built 10 touring cars with pneumatic tires and four-speed overdrive transmissions. But as fate would have it, the company returned to the road oiler business.

>From 1910 to 1915, improvements were made in the road oiler including a wheel-driven pump and a spray bar to spread oil, tar, or asphalt evenly across the road. During World War I, Etnyre began mounting the road oiler tanks and spray equipment on truck chassis for the US military.

With continuing product development, a metering wheel that synchronized spray volume and road speed was mounted underneath the truck. Metering wheels were used through the 1980s.

During World War II, Etnyre was primarily engaged in manufacturing truck tanks for the US military to spread liquid bituminous products. Postwar expansion of the interstate highway system brought increased demand for the company's truck tanks and trailers.

Following years brought more new product introductions. In 1963, Etnyre introduced a motorized chip spreader that can evenly spread a dump truck load of aggregate chips during a paving operation. Today, the company is more diversified, but bituminous distributors remain a large part of Etnyre's business.

Etnyre Product Groups Etnyre's products are divided into three groups. One is equipment built for the paving industry such as asphalt distributors, chip spreaders, and flushers. The second group is truck tanks and trailers for transporting bituminous liquids, and the last group is heavy haul trailers. Following is a brief description of the products and their uses:

Asphalt distributors are truck tanks mounted on chassis and equipped with spray bars that apply bituminous liquids. In-cab controls accurately apply liquid asphalt from the spray bar.

Chip spreaders for aggregate used in paving operations are available with mechanical- or hydraulic-drive conveyors and two- or four-wheel drive. A self-locking hitch enables the spreader to use more than one truckload of chips during paving.

The chip spreader has a hydrostatic drive system with an adjustable, consistent working speed; hydraulically driven conveyors; and accurate chip-flow control for uniform coverage. A variable width hopper allows the spreader to adjust up to 24 feet for changing road widths.

Flushers are trucks mounted with 1,900- to 3,500-gallon water tanks. The trucks are equipped with hydrostatic-drive 750 gallon-per-minute (GPM) water pumps and a patented water-control system that automatically maintains water pressure.

Pressure sprinklers have 1,900- to 3,500-gallon truck tanks that produce a uniform spray no matter how much water is in the tank. The standard unit includes a PTO-driven 185-GPM water pump with an option for a larger water pump and flushing nozzles.

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