A short history of Brookline Machine Company Inc.
In September 1938 Alfred Whiting, also known as Jack, with the aid of his brother-in-law, bought a small machine shop with it's two machinists. It was known then as Brookline Machine Company, located in Brookline MA at 676 Brookline Avenue. Guy Jones founded it after W.W.I. He died in the mid thirties and his wife found it hard to keep the business going. With Jack's
background, which included engineering courses at M.I.T. and a job as a fire protection engineer selling "in-plant" fire equipment for American LaFrance Co., he was able to quickly energize the company. With the advent of W.W.II, the services offered by the shop were in great demand by many of the local defense contractors. The operation was able to help these contractors with the production of short run items that were not efficiently done in production operations.
Because of the extreme demands of the war effort the company expanded dramatically. At this time, Jack also purchased a second company, Transit Machine Co., located on Mass Ave. in Boston. As the war production slowed in the mid 1940's, he could see very well that the type of work his companies were doing was going to be drastically reduced. He also observed that the trucking industry needed a lot of machining and also new parts for the driveshafts and related items. He saw that Campbell Distribution Co., later NAPA New England, was making a fair profit on the parts that they were installing along with the work that the machine shop did. Why couldn't Brookline Machine make that profit?
Therefore, in 1946 he secured his first distribution agreement with the Almetal Products Co. They provided replacement parts for Spicer, Detroit, Cleveland, and Mechanics drivelines along with a few proprietary shafts that they produced. Shortly thereafter, in 1948, Dana Corporation, Blood Brothers Machine Co., Mechanics Universal Joint Co., Cleveland Universal Joint Co., and Detroit Universal Joint Co. all agreed to set up Brookline Machine Co., Inc. as the New England distributor for their products. At this time he set up a separate store in Brookline calling it automotive Parts Warehouse Co. to warehouse the parts and sell them not only to the machine shop, but also to any other organizations that could use them.
Lack of space and the inconvenience of separate locations necessitated a major move. In the fall of 1949, everything was moved to a 5000 square foot building in Brighton, Mass., which is the present machine shop section of the current building.
Jack's son, Jack Jr., joined the company in September 1957 after a three-year stint in the U. S. Air Force. This provided new impetus to the company and when Dana Corp came to them in 1958 requesting them to set up a warehouse in Syracuse, New York, they were ready and eager to give it a shot. This was a wholly owned subsidiary and was later, in 1965, augmented by a second location in Buffalo, NY. The Syracuse operation was closed in 1994.
Also in 1965, Cockcroft Company in Providence, RI, one of Brookline's largest customers, was acquired as a running concern.
In the early 1960's the warehouse in Boston was tripled in size to 15,000 square feet. A second addition was made in 1977 and the warehouse was brought to its present size of 30,000 square feet. During the 1960's and 1970's many more lines and manufacturers were added to the products being sold.
Brookline was one of the first small distributors to automate stock control. It was in the early 1960's that a used Remington Rand unit record system replaced an old written card system. This was later upgraded to using a data processing utility named Keydata. In the early 1980's a Basic Four Computer was bought, starting full time in-house data processing. The programs that were developed for this system were later sold to other firms in parts distribution.
In January 1982, one of our best competitors, Chambers Power Equipment, decided that they wished to get out of the business, and asked us to buy their operation in Hillside, NJ. This was readily agreed to and still operates under the name of NJ Brookline Machine Co.
In 1984, in order to assist customers in the southern Boston metro area at the start of the southeast expressway project, a small warehouse was set up in Stoughton, MA. which still offers service to that area.
In 1985, another customer, Williams Bros. in Portland, ME, wished to sell their operation and Brookline Machine was happy to take over control of that fine company.
Two years later, in 1987, another satellite branch was added to service customers in the north of Boston and southern NH. This branch is in North Andover MA.
Brew Whiting, son of Jack, Jr., joined the company in 1984 after college and a couple of years working for a truck parts distribution firm in California. He became President in September of 1993 and is presently running the company and all of its subsidiaries.
Wendy Gargiulo, Jack Jr.'s daughter, joined the company in 1977 and took over as Treasurer in 1993.
We look forward to continuing to assist all our customers and to be the right company with the right products.
"FOR POWER TRANSFER” because "WE LIKE TRUCKS"
