VIDEO: Happy for a ‘tank’ing economy

The phrase “the economy has tanked” actually holds a positive connotation for one Independence company.

With smiles on their faces, three of the Goad Company’s executives watched Thursday morning at 144 S. Kentucky Ave. as a total of 18 tanks were loaded onto trucks for an almost 400-mile journey to Moline, Ill. Curtis Goad, the company’s president, thinks the tanks represent “one of the largest automated hard-chrome plating lines in North America.”

The tanks also represent a technology four years in the making. Goad Company has a patent pending on a lining technology known as N-FUZE, Goad said.

Curtis Goad lead the effort to develop it four years ago and applied for a patent about 18 months ago.

“This is an exciting day when you see four big trucks here, moving all of this out,” Goad said with a laugh.

 Because the technology is patent pending and is likely to receive its approval within eight to 12 months, Goad didn’t disclose specific details on how the technology works.

“It’s like going from drafting with a pencil and a ruler to AutoCAD 14,” Goad said. “It’s vastly superior to what’s been done for 40 years.” 

The tanks were en route to John Deere’s Illinois headquarters, where they will be used at the company’s cylinder division. Large tarps draped and secured across the tanks protect them from weather elements like Thursday’s rain in Independence.

Each tank took about six weeks to complete, including welding and gluing of linings. The tanks’ linings are bonded to steel and welded at the tanks’ joints, while the liners are rigid, plastic fabrications that drop into the steel tanks’ frameworks. Each tank is 12 feet deep and measures 6 feet from front to back.

 Joe Renaud, vice president of Goad Company, said chemicals typically used in electroplating are corrosive to steel. Steel is still widely accepted as a high-strength, low-cost material, so methods must exist to protect steel tanks from corrosive chemical solutions, he said.

Developed approximately half a century ago, Koroseal is one lining that protects steel from the harshest corrosive environments, Renaud said. N-FUZE uses an improved welding method to put Koroseal in steel tanks and completely protect the steel without any gaps, Goad said.

In 1955, Curtis Goad’s father, Hal, and Hal’s brother Larry started the Goad Company in Ellisville, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. Curtis Goad’s full-time involvement started in 1977.

Goad laughed when asked what type of college education he received to understand the corrosion-resistant tank industry. He graduated with degrees in political science and law.

“Like any business, once you’re in it, you try to do the best with it. It becomes important to you,” Goad said.

The Independence location opened in 1971, while the Ellisville branch is now mainly an administrative and sales headquarters. The company employs 17 people, with 10 employees based in Independence.

“Back in the 1960s and 1970s, this kind of manufacturing – surface finishing, metal finishing – was so prevalent in both markets that we couldn’t keep with the demand in Kansas City with a plant in St. Louis,” Renaud said.

N-FUZE represents an effort to overcome weaknesses in older methodologies, Goad said.

“While these linings have performed well, it was a real hardship for our customers when they had to be repaired. There’s a lot of downtime and lost production when there’s repair issues, so we were looking for something that would lengthen the surface life.”

With a laugh, Renaud added that “without customers, we’re not very successful.”

“One of the things that motivates us is the problem solving for the customers because it is such a unique business,” Renaud said. “The ability to help customers solve real issues with protecting their equipment from the environment and workers keeps us going.”