A brief history of Nelco Manufacturing
The company was a combination manufacturing and contracting business. The original founder of the company R.T. Nelson, invented the shot-blasting process and founded the company in 1972 to make and distribute this equipment. He aslo had a contracting business that used the equipment in their coating operations. After his death in 1993 the company was purchased from his heirs by Gregory J. Edwards and C. Stephen Lynn who then operated the company.
Nelco Manufacturing Corp. made concrete surface preparation equipment that utilized shot blasting combined with a shot blast recovery system that also picked up the material removed by the shot blasting. Distribution and manufacturing was handled out of Oklahoma City. The equipment was branded with the name Porta Shot-Blast.
Nelco manufacturing was a part of another company called CASS Corp. The combination of companies was helpful in that other parts of the company did contract restoration, surface preparation and used the equipment on the jobs. Both making it and using the Porta Shot-Blast equipment provided very close feed back on how the equipment performed in the field.
It was operated this way up until 1997 when an agreement was made to sell the company to U.S. Filter the manufacturer of Blastrac. Equipment previously made by Nelco is still being used by many contractors in the floor coating industry today. Finding used equipment and keeping it running is one of the activities that Industrial Flooring Technologies does.