In any other industry, Keith Patterson of Jeffrey Specialty Equipment Corporation would be an anomaly but—as perhaps is indicative of what has taken place in the mining industry over the years in operating companies and manufacturers alike—Patterson has had continual employment for nearly 30 years, but for five different owners.

Known today for its preparation plant and mineral processing equipment, nearly a century ago Jeffrey then the Joy of today, and it very well could have remained so had it not been for a disagreement between Joseph Joy and his then employer, The Jeffrey Manufacturing Company.

“In the early 1900s,” Patterson said, “Joseph Joy was working as an engineer for Joseph Jeffrey’s company, the company that had developed the industry’s first rail-mounted “face-undercutter”. A disagreement resulted in Joy leaving Jeffrey to form his own company, probably one of the most significant turning points in the history of the mining machinery industry.”

“Though almost a century ago,” Patterson said. “Jeffrey’s roots date back still further, to 1876 when Louis Lechner’s invention of an air operated undercutting machine for the coal industry brought together him and banker-investors Francis Sessions and Joseph Jeffrey, in whose Perry County, OH coal mine the machine was tested. By 1887, Jeffrey was the sole owner of Lechner Mining Machine Company and the name had been changed to Jeffrey Mining Machinery.”

According to Patterson, it was Jeffrey who slowly but inexorably led the coal industry to mechanization, from cutting machines to the first direct current electric haulage locomotive, developed in collaboration with Thomas Edison.

“By 1900, Jeffrey had the largest manufacturing facility in Columbus, OH and had manufacturing and sales offices in England, South Africa and Australia, and also had expanded into non-mining applications of its equipment,” Patterson recounted.

“Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the company expanded through acquisitions,” he continued, “beginning with the Ohio Malleable Iron Company in 1904 (chain castings) and then the Galion Iron Works and Manufacturing Co. (steam rollers and road graders) in 1929. By 1930, the Jeffrey product line also included belt, screw and chain conveyors, crushers, mine ventilation fans, coal preparation equipment, foundry systems, and wastewater treatment equipment; it’s product catalog of the period exceeded 960 pages.”

During World War II, while the company continued production of mining equipment, Jeffrey also manufactured Euclid trucks, and construction machinery for building landing strips to support the war effort, Patterson said. “Following the war, the company continued to expand and, by the 1950s, the original manufacturing facility had grown to more than one million square feet under roof, there were sales and distribution offices in 16 states, as well as in Canada, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, France, Australia, Belgium, England, and Russia. The company had more than 7,500 employees worldwide.”

Patterson himself joined Jeffrey in December 1979. “At the time, I had been with National Mine Service since graduating as a mechanical engineer from the University of Pittsburgh in 1975. While at Pitt, I had worked with the Bureau of Mines, then MESA (Mine Enforcement and Safety Administration), doing studies on diesel emissions for underground use in coal mines.

“My first job with National Mine Service in Kentucky was as a design engineer working on diesel locomotives. It was interesting work but, at the same time, I was becoming bored sitting all day at a drafting table; there was no customer interface. In 1979, Jeffrey gave me the opportunity to apply my expertise designing a line of diesel locomotives, both low and high profile models.

“Jeffrey had a unique approach in its management structure. As a production manager with marketing responsibilities for a product line, you also had responsibility for engineering of that product line with a staff of engineers. You set the priorities, and you had profit and loss responsibilities.

“Apparently, I succeeded to their standards as eventually I had full responsibility for five product lines: Ramcars, continuous haulage, locomotives, mainline ventilation fans, and satellite water pumps. The only product line for which I was not responsible was continuous miners, that came under Warren Fife.

“Back when I started with them as an applications engineer, Jeffrey was a private company owned by the Jeffrey family,” Patterson offered. “In 1974 it was bought by Dresser Industries, a public company, which, in 1992, spun off a number of its non-oil-related companies, including Jeffrey, into newly-formed Indresco, a holding company.

“In 1995,” he continued, “the mining and processing lines were split at Jeffrey, with the mining side being sold to Long-Airdox Co., subsequently purchased by DBT which itself was bought by Bucyrus International, Inc. in October 2007. The processing side of the business—Jeffrey Processing Equipment—was sold by Indresco to Global Industrial Technologies, another holding company, and then was purchased by Pennsylvania Crusher Co. of Philadelphia in 1999—returning to private ownership for the first time since 1974—and was renamed Jeffrey Specialty Equipment Corp. In 2003, Pennsylvania Crusher was bought by K-Tron International Inc. of Pitman, New Jersey. During a time while some folks in this business were changing jobs, I was changing owners,” Patterson recalled.

“The beginning of the end for the original Jeffrey was staying with hydraulics too long after Joy developed the electric continuous miner,” Patterson said. “Also contributing to its demise was just the general evolution of a family owned company. You go from the founder to the offspring to the grandchildren to, in some cases, the great grandchildren. Where originally the hard driving force of the founder was there to make the company successful, the children, in a lot of cases, live off that success and, by the time you get to the grandchildren, the interest level in the company no longer is there, they don’t want to be involved.

“Tad Jeffrey was the exception to that, however, Patterson added. “A grandson of the founder, Joe Jeffrey, Tad worked in engineering as a degreed engineer; he went underground, he knew mining methods. I doubt if he was one of the heirs who wanted to sell the company to Dresser back in ’74. I don’t know that, but I feel it. As far as I know, he’s still in Columbus, and he’s still active.”

In the process of changing ownerships and concentrating on the manufacture of processing equipment, the once immense Jeffrey facilities that occupied blocks upon blocks of Columbus, OH was no more. In 1985 the manufacturing of mine haulage and auxiliary equipment (spun off 10 years later) was moved from Columbus to the Jeffrey facilities in Woodruff, SC situated halfway between Spartanburg and Greenville.

That same year, Patterson was given the task of moving there the remaining manufacturing and engineering activities from Washington, PA. The remaining Jeffrey facilities  in Canada, England and South Africa were closed, today Jeffrey Specialty Equipment is the only segment of the original Jeffrey family operation still operating under that name.

“Our company today manufacturers, sells and services coal preparation and materials handling and crushing equipment for mining and non-mining applications,” Patterson said. “This includes small and large vibrating feeders that range from the NF2405, 240 tph feed rate  designed for any type application, such as reclaim tunnels or loadouts where the material flow is to be monitored, to the 2000 tph NF8412 model used in coal and mineral processing.”

Last September, Jeffrey acquired Rader Companies of Atlanta, a privately held company that engineers, manufactures and services material handling systems for the pulp, paper and biomass industries. This equipment includes screening equipment, pneumatic conveying equipment and material reclaim systems, as well as other products for the petrochemical industry.

“We are in the process of relocating Rader to our facilities in Woodruff,” Patterson said, adding that they already have begun transitioning to in-house manufacturing. “That process should be completed this year,” he said, “though it probably will take several years before we are totally self-manufacturing.” The company also has offices in Sweden, Canada (Vancouver and Quebec), and agents in South America.

With that acquisition, Jeffrey now has about 120 employees total. “The coal industry remains an important part of our business,” Patterson said, “at the company’s peak, Jeffrey probably accounted for the majority of equipment sold to the underground coal industry and, in particular segments, the company’s market shares were even higher than that.

“For example,” he said, “up into the 1980s Jeffrey had at least 95 percent of the diesel Ramcar market, the only competitor then being Wagner Teletrams. And that was only because Kerr-McGee management didn’t want to be ‘held hostage’ by one vendor and ordered a Wagner unit to try it. Two or two-and-a-half years down the line, we took that in trade when they bought three more Jeffrey units, and there were many hours on that machine.

“Ramcars had high—around 95 percent—on-shift availability,” Patterson continued, “but then the diesel business changed in the 1990s when there was a switch to dry scrubber systems. A lot of our machines were converted over and I believe DBT still offers them today, with some going to Australia and out West.

“I do know,” he continued, “that in our time we did make an impact on the JOY shuttle car, in 1984-85-86. In fact, I recall in one of their annual reports to stockholders at the time a sentence that specifically said there was a negative effect on sales of shuttle cars due to inroads made by Ramcars.

“It was around that time I visited China, 1986, where we also had some success. Up through the early 2000s, 2002 maybe, we sold them both continuous miners and continuous haulage systems. The problem we had in China was that they would estimate what parts they would need for an entire year and order them at the same time they ordered the equipment. Which was fine except, if they didn’t do a good job in their estimating and ran out of a part after eight months, the equipment would sit idle for four months until the next year’s ordering cycle”.

“After the sale of Jeffrey’s mining equipment line to DBT,” Patterson related, “they married the two continuous haulage systems—Jeffrey’s and Long-Airdox’s—taking the best from both. Long-Airdox probably had 75 percent of that market then,” Patterson said, “and the adoption of the Jeffrey 32-inch system, which was more heavily built, more reliable than theirs, can’t have hurt.”

On the processing side, Patterson said Jeffrey occasionally competes with Gundlach and Pennsylvania Crusher, both sister companies under K-Tron. “Their large crushers go up to 4,000 tph machines, mainly for the Powder River Basin mines,” Patterson explained. “Jeffrey coal crushers range up to 2,000 tph, mainly for the bituminous coal applications.

“Between the three sisters—us, Gundlach and PCC—I don’t know our respective market shares but, combined, I’m sure we account for more the lion’s share of the market for coal processing, both at the mines and at the power plants. We also have a significant share of the feeder market.

“Though the coal industry continues to be important to Jeffrey, today we have a much larger presence in the wood processing and paper mill industries, where we provide chip sizers, hammers, screens and other equipment,” Patterson offered.

“In wood chip production, customers want oversize material in the 3-10 percent of product range and, in the acceptable range, 85 to 92-93 percent. Pines and fines, 4-5 percent of the desirable distribution, dissolve in the process, but they consume liquor, which costs the operator money. The remainder is oversize, which won’t fully cook in the digester within acceptable times.

Wait. Just how did a nearly three-decade coal man become such a wood expert in a relatively short time? “Time,” Patterson offered, “time spent with the experts, time spent with the customers. I’m still in coal, it’s just that I’m into other industries as well: Wood and paper, solid waste, rubber, fiberglass shredders, where Jeffrey machines set the standard as the market leader. And don’t forget, I’ve been in these markets since ’93 now.

“I came from Washington, PA to Woodruff as manager of engineering with responsibility for research and development, field services, marketing activities and sales applications, that’s when an inquiry comes into us deciding what machine, and what size machine, best will accomplish the task for the customer and then sending off sales to discuss all this with the customer. Manager of applications, that’s sales application. It involves me with all our sales people, all our service people and all our customers.

“It’s fun,” Patterson added. “It’s a job, and a man’s got to work. Do I miss coal mining, the mining equipment? Though I’m still involved in mining with crushers and feeders, that’s true, I’m no longer involved in the design and manufacture of mining machinery. That is something I came to love, that always will be there. I continue to have great admiration for coal miners, what they do, how they do it and how safely they do it in a hostile environment.

“I still have a lot of friends in mining and still see them, like when I go to the MSHA Academy tomorrow for my mandatory retraining to keep my card current. This pink slip has been in my wallet since 1973,” Patterson noted, adding: it will remain there for many years to come.