A brief history of TACO

Introduction
Taco, Inc., headquartered in Cranston, RI, is one of the leading brand manufacturers within the HVAC industry. The company, in business since 1920, specializes in hydronic-based components for use in heating and cooling applications across the building spectrum - residential, commercial, industrial and institutional. Taco manufactures a wide range of pumps, heat exchangers, expansion tanks, flow measurement devices, air separators and valves, and zone control products.

Taco products have long been recognized for their outstanding quality, field reliability and durability, and ease of installation and maintenance. Over the decades, the Taco name has been, and continues to be, associated with perpetual innovation and important new product developments.

Taco is proud to be an ISO 9001-registered company, producing products at internationally recognized quality standards.

The company maintains a loyal workforce of about 500, and operates manufacturing, distribution and sales facilities in Cranston, RI, Fall River, Mass. and in Ontario, Canada. Taco sells its products direct to OEMS and to trade professionals via the distribution channel through a national network of independent manufacturers' rep. agencies and overseas sales agents. Annual sales exceed $100 million.

Taco products are sold throughout North America, in Mexico, Central and Latin America, within the Middle East, and in Asia.

A Bit of History
The history and progress of Taco is inseparable from that of the White family, which has owned and operated the company from its very beginning right after WWI. Three generations of Whites - grandfather, father, and son - have been active in the company, starting with Elwood White (1920-1942), John Hazen White (1936-2001), and John Hazen White Jr. (1980 -). Today, Taco retains its unique status as a family owned and operated, privately held business.

The company began in Elizabeth, New Jersey, when Elwood White, the enterprising son of an Episcopal Bishop of Indiana (the original John Hazen White) purchased the Thermal Appliance Company (T. A. Co.) in 1920. White, a former radiator salesman, wanted to run his own business and start at the ground floor. In Elizabeth, he actually started the business in a basement.

The company soon relocated to Providence, RI, after Elwood White teamed up with inventor Robert Blanding. Its first successful product was the tankless water heater that Page Two was equipped with a second innovation, a tempering valve to mix hot with cold water. By the 1930s, Taco controlled the U.S. water heater market, and the term "Taco Heater" became a universally recognized name in the nascent HVAC industry.

In the decades that followed, Taco developed a wide range of hydronic-based products, including a highly successful line of circulator pumps known as the "00" series and bigger commercial pumps - close coupled, frame mounted and vertical in-line - that significantly broadened the company's core pump products line. In recent years, with advanced electronics impacting the HVAC industry, especially in products tied to building controls and automation, diagnostics and temperature zoning, Taco has significantly expanded its electronic controls offerings and now offers one of the most complete product lines in the industry.

The Taco Philosophy
Taco has been recognized as being a special company, and its special nature has a lot to do with its success. Management at Taco has always been close to the folks on the line. Like his father before him, John Hazen White Jr. is often on the factory floor and knows most of his employees by their first names. Taco has virtually no turnover, and many people continue to work there past retirement age. Employees, vendors and suppliers, licensees, and customers are all part of a very loyal "Taco family."

John Hazen White Sr. espoused a business philosophy that ultimately linked a company's success to its people relationships. He believed in making the workplace more than just a place to earn a weekly paycheck. He also believed that successful companies owed something back to the surrounding community.

In 1992 John Hazen White's idea of an on-site learning center for employees was realized with the opening of the Taco Learning Center. Originally designed to provide the kind of training needed by Taco's employees to match their skills with new equipment being introduced at Taco, the TLC quickly became a lot more than just a classroom for employee training. It morphed into an expanded learning facility for employees where all kinds of subjects were offered - and all at no charge.

Today Taco employees can study for the G.E.D. or practice their English-language skills for citizenship training, or take college-level or individual study courses on a wide range of subjects. The unique character of the Taco Learning Center for a company the size of Taco was recognized by no less than Fortune Magazine, in an article in 1995, in which it characterized Taco as a company (that) "stands as a testament to the power of human capital."

john hazen white, jr.

The history of Taco for the past 80 years is very much the history of my family. My grandfather and father devoted their working lives to building Taco. Each faced tough times but they always persevered, no matter what the adversity. From the very first products to our latest developments, Taco has contributed immeasurably to the advancement of the hydronics industry.

In recent years, Taco has changed drastically. We have restructured our management team, establishing operation centers and empowering mid-level management with more responsibility...and authority. We made significant investments in new state-of-the-art equipment and processes. We began to concentrate on international business in an organized, committed way. And we opened our Taco Learning Center for the lasting benefit of our employees and their families.

The Taco Learning Center has been recognized as one of the more progressive examples of employee training anywhere in the country. It goes beyond many similar efforts because of Taco's commitment to serve the larger training and educational needs of its employees. Since many of our employees are foreign born, they have wide-ranging educational needs. The Taco Learning Center, with its offerings in English as a second language, math and civics, is there to help them. Because we recognize that employees have families with many of the same needs, we offer courses free of charge to family members as well.  

As a family-owned and operated company, we feel a special obligation to our employees and vendors. We are in a dynamic partnership with them, informed by shared values that have stood us well over years of growth and development. Now that we are a mature company, with a market horizon that is increasingly global, one of the challenges we face is to reaffirm and strengthen the values that created and shaped Taco....

In the coming years, Taco will be bigger, more diversified and active in many new markets. The working partnerships, shared values and abiding commitment to product quality that have sustained us for 80 years will, I expect, keep us competitive and vital well into the future.

TACO's PRODUCT RANGE