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History of Bowie Industries
For all practical purposes Bowie Industries was founded by Sig Andreasenand Owen Meyer. Sig’s machinist skill and Owen’s welding skill was a good combination. The partnership known as Bowie Machine Works had the right combination of skills at the right time. Fortunately, for Owen and Sig, there was an oil field north of Bowie that was being developed. With oil $2.35 per barrel and the smaller, less productive oil fields of north Texas, drilling companies never bought anything new. Every piece of everything was repaired and repaired again. Also, it is customary for the drilling contractor to have it specified in the contract that the lease operator would pay a rate per foot drilled and pay for any repairs necessary during the drilling. More incentive for the drilling companies to get things repaired instead of replaced. Life was difficult in the North Texas oil patch, but Owen and Sig managed to grow into a company employing about a dozen employees. In the normal course of business, they repaired almost anything used in the oil patch. One of the items which they rebuilt was a certain model of Gould rotary gear pump used on tank trucks. This pump was mounted on the PTO of the truck and used to load and off load the crude oil or salt water being hauled. Gould apparently decided that the oil field products were not profitable enough and dropped that model altogether. That model of pump had steel gears and those gears were vulnerable to abrasion. From other jobs that Owen and Sig had done, they had dealt with rubber being bonded onto steel to withstand abrasion. The idea of bonding rubber (actually a synthetic rubber) onto a metal “spider” was developed. This idea was even more attractive because gear making equipment was way too expensive for Owen and Sig to purchase. After Gould quit making that pump, Owen and Sig started building that pump with rubber gears. A patent was obtained for the rubber bonding on this gear configuration. Next is one of those strange coincidences of life. During the mid 1950’s International Paper Company had come up with the idea that they could get rid of their waste wood by grinding it into a mulch. This mulch would then be mixed with seed, water and fertilizer and spray out on highway rights of way to establish grass. With the development of the Interstate Highway System, International Paper anticipated a huge market. Somehow, the engineers at International Paper Company had seen a Bowie Pump on one of Bowie Machine’s cold tar roofing units in Houston. After looking at the pump and the process, they decided that the Bowie Pump was the only pump which would pump their slurry of mulch, seed, fertilizer and water. The current state of technology at that time was to mix seed and water only into the tank and spray out. Then a strawblowerwas used to cover the area with straw to protect the area and help germination. To hold the straw in place companies had to crimp it with a plow type implement or spray emulsified asphalt onto the straw. Supposedly, International Paper Company approached other companies to develop a one step machine which would mix mulch, seed, water and fertilizer and spray out the slurry to establish grass.
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Since International Paper Company thought that the Bowie Pump was the only pump that could successfully pump the mulch slurry, it was decided to develop the machine in conjunction with Bowie Machine Works. With International Paper Company’s backing, the inventiveness and skills of Owen and Sig, the “hydromulcher” was developed. The first hydromulcherwas built about 1957. This machine was developed from day one to have a shredder bar to break up the bales of mulch and heavy duty aggressive agitation required to mix the mulch slurry. Apparently International Paper Company did a tremendous marketing job, because 1961-1963 Bowie Machine Works was building and shipping dozens of hydromulchersinto foreign countries, and state governments, forestry services, throughout the United States. By the late 1960’s the interstate highway system was getting completed. International Paper Company decided the market for mulch was not going to continue to be a big enough market without the big highway projects. Therefore, International Paper Company closed their mulch operation in the late 1960’s. Owen and Sig decided that they could still build the hydromulcher product line with the primary market being home lawns. The Bowie Pump design of the 1950’s is still manufactured and sold throughout the United States, Canada and many foreign countries. The oil industry remains the biggest market, but there are applications anywhere thick, dirty, or abrasive liquids are being moved. Applications include, nitrogen jelly used in the explosives industry, liquid feed, liquid fertilizer, cannery waste, flocculants in water plants, harbor skimmers, pet food and many other applications. The second largest market is pumping emulsified ammonium nitrate for the explosives industry. The niche is hard to handle liquids or when the power source provides an RPM of less than 400 rpm, such as PTO mounts. The basic hydromulchersdesign of the 1950’s is also still manufactured. Because, Owen, Sig and International Paper Company, designed this equipment specifically to shred, mix and spray mulch slurries, it still has competitive advantages. Other manufacturers took the route of modifying their existing “hydroseeding” equipment to also handle mulch. Fifty years after development of this equipment, you can see the differences in philosophy and development. Heavier duty construction, function over form and performance are features that you would expect from an old world craftsman and a welder that lived through the Great Depression and managed to make a living in the oil patch when oil was $2.35 a barrel. To this day Bowie Industries is still a family owned business with many multi-generational workers in their employ.
For all practical purposes Bowie Industries was founded by Sig Andreasenand Owen Meyer. Sig’s machinist skill and Owen’s welding skill was a good combination. The partnership known as Bowie Machine Works had the right combination of skills at the right time. Fortunately, for Owen and Sig, there was an oil field north of Bowie that was being developed. With oil $2.35 per barrel and the smaller, less productive oil fields of north Texas, drilling companies never bought anything new. Every piece of everything was repaired and repaired again. Also, it is customary for the drilling contractor to have it specified in the contract that the lease operator would pay a rate per foot drilled and pay for any repairs necessary during the drilling. More incentive for the drilling companies to get things repaired instead of replaced. Life was difficult in the North Texas oil patch, but Owen and Sig managed to grow into a company employing about a dozen employees. In the normal course of business, they repaired almost anything used in the oil patch. One of the items which they rebuilt was a certain model of Gould rotary gear pump used on tank trucks. This pump was mounted on the PTO of the truck and used to load and off load the crude oil or salt water being hauled. Gould apparently decided that the oil field products were not profitable enough and dropped that model altogether. That model of pump had steel gears and those gears were vulnerable to abrasion. From other jobs that Owen and Sig had done, they had dealt with rubber being bonded onto steel to withstand abrasion. The idea of bonding rubber (actually a synthetic rubber) onto a metal “spider” was developed. This idea was even more attractive because gear making equipment was way too expensive for Owen and Sig to purchase. After Gould quit making that pump, Owen and Sig started building that pump with rubber gears. A patent was obtained for the rubber bonding on this gear configuration. Next is one of those strange coincidences of life. During the mid 1950’s International Paper Company had come up with the idea that they could get rid of their waste wood by grinding it into a mulch. This mulch would then be mixed with seed, water and fertilizer and spray out on highway rights of way to establish grass. With the development of the Interstate Highway System, International Paper anticipated a huge market. Somehow, the engineers at International Paper Company had seen a Bowie Pump on one of Bowie Machine’s cold tar roofing units in Houston. After looking at the pump and the process, they decided that the Bowie Pump was the only pump which would pump their slurry of mulch, seed, fertilizer and water. The current state of technology at that time was to mix seed and water only into the tank and spray out. Then a strawblowerwas used to cover the area with straw to protect the area and help germination. To hold the straw in place companies had to crimp it with a plow type implement or spray emulsified asphalt onto the straw. Supposedly, International Paper Company approached other companies to develop a one step machine which would mix mulch, seed, water and fertilizer and spray out the slurry to establish grass.
5
Since International Paper Company thought that the Bowie Pump was the only pump that could successfully pump the mulch slurry, it was decided to develop the machine in conjunction with Bowie Machine Works. With International Paper Company’s backing, the inventiveness and skills of Owen and Sig, the “hydromulcher” was developed. The first hydromulcherwas built about 1957. This machine was developed from day one to have a shredder bar to break up the bales of mulch and heavy duty aggressive agitation required to mix the mulch slurry. Apparently International Paper Company did a tremendous marketing job, because 1961-1963 Bowie Machine Works was building and shipping dozens of hydromulchersinto foreign countries, and state governments, forestry services, throughout the United States. By the late 1960’s the interstate highway system was getting completed. International Paper Company decided the market for mulch was not going to continue to be a big enough market without the big highway projects. Therefore, International Paper Company closed their mulch operation in the late 1960’s. Owen and Sig decided that they could still build the hydromulcher product line with the primary market being home lawns. The Bowie Pump design of the 1950’s is still manufactured and sold throughout the United States, Canada and many foreign countries. The oil industry remains the biggest market, but there are applications anywhere thick, dirty, or abrasive liquids are being moved. Applications include, nitrogen jelly used in the explosives industry, liquid feed, liquid fertilizer, cannery waste, flocculants in water plants, harbor skimmers, pet food and many other applications. The second largest market is pumping emulsified ammonium nitrate for the explosives industry. The niche is hard to handle liquids or when the power source provides an RPM of less than 400 rpm, such as PTO mounts. The basic hydromulchersdesign of the 1950’s is also still manufactured. Because, Owen, Sig and International Paper Company, designed this equipment specifically to shred, mix and spray mulch slurries, it still has competitive advantages. Other manufacturers took the route of modifying their existing “hydroseeding” equipment to also handle mulch. Fifty years after development of this equipment, you can see the differences in philosophy and development. Heavier duty construction, function over form and performance are features that you would expect from an old world craftsman and a welder that lived through the Great Depression and managed to make a living in the oil patch when oil was $2.35 a barrel. To this day Bowie Industries is still a family owned business with many multi-generational workers in their employ.