90 Years Strong

Time tested craftsmanship and reliability have turned Smith Tank & Equipment into a leading supplier of storage tanks for everyone from the food to the petroleum and chemical industries.

Smith Tank & Equipment Co. was started in late 1929 by Mr. Curtis Smith as a result of the discovery of a large underground oil reserve in North East Texas. The company’s first product was steel storage tanks for the new oil fields. Later on it also began building bobtail truck tanks for transporting the oil and, after refining, transporting gasoline.
This was a relatively new industry in those days, so equipment and tools to make the tanks had to be invented. Trees were actually used to bend the steel around in order to make a round tank. Later on, of course, steel rolls were developed so a more consistent round tank could be manufactured. Smith Tank prospered in those early days because there was very little competition in the manufacturer of oil storage tanks.
In the late 1940’s, Smith Tank developed steel tank products for the chemical industry which were much more sophisticated than were required in the oil drilling industry. This gave the company a much broader market base plus the tanks had to be of a significantly higher quality.
In the late 1970’s the company, together with the A.E. Staley Company of Decatur, Ill., developed a corn syrup tank for storing and dispensing corn syrup into food manufacturing plants. The name of this tank was called a Staport and it was built like a large skid tank except it was heated, insulated and jacked with a heated pump room on one end. Corn Syrup is quite viscous at 80 degrees Fahrenheit so it must be kept at about 105 degrees in order to be pumped.
The Staport was developed because the food industry was changing from the use of granulated sugar as a sweetener to corn syrup to reduce sweetener costs and greatly improve sanitation and productivity. The late 1970’s and early 1980’s were boom years for Smith Tank because so many of the large Food Manufacturers were changing over to corn syrup for their sweetener needs.
Rather than using more costly granulated sugar in 100 pound sacks which had to be manhandled, they were able, with corn syrup, to have it delivered in bulk by tanker truck or railroad tank car, pumped into a Staport and then pump directly into their plant. The syrup, pumped through the piping, would then be metered into each of their recipes throughout the plant. No human hands needed to touch the sweetener.
Smith Tank & Equipment Co. was purchased, in April of 1985, by James W. Blair, Jr. from the sons of the founder.
“After graduating from the University of Arizona with a degree in mechanical engineering, I went to work for General Electric on their three year Manufacturing Training Program,” Blair said. “I worked for them a total of 14 years and then left to become a Group Vice President of Handy & Harman where I managed 15 different manufacturing subsidiaries before I decided to own my own company.”
The company was at a low point in sales because of the poor economy at that time plus the fact the oil boom in Texas had crashed. The company was attractive to the Blair family because of its long quality reputation and that its major business, at that time, was in food sweeteners and not oil drilling tanks.
The company produces tanks in sizes from 550 gallons up to 90,000 gallons in both stainless and carbon steels. It has the ability of lining tanks with an FDA approved epoxy lining as well as insulating, heating and jacketing tanks. Mr. James W. Blair, III currently serves as President and is son of the purchasing Blair family. He is the day to day operations Manager and his wife, Tammy Blair, is the company Controller.
“Because there are only a few companies in the U.S. that can manufacture FDA approved food tanks with our level of quality,” said Blair Jr., “we’re able to market across the country and into Mexico as well. However, with the cost of transporting chemical tanks, we mainly market around Texas, into Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Louisiana.”
The company markets in the industrial and commercial areas, while they continue to develop new products. One of its developments is a tank which replaces the old 55 gallon drum and is called a portable stack tank. It is safer, more easily handled, can be stacked four high, has plumbing for material removal and can be handled by a fork lift truck from all four directions.
Another tank developed is a double wall tank which can have a sensing device between the two walls to sense leakage into the interstitial space between walls or it has a glass eye installed at the shells lowest point for visual inspection. This allows the tank to be situated outside of a containment dike because the second wall meets a dike’s requirements for containment.
Another tank which has been developed with Smith Tank & Equipment’s customer, Thedford Systems now General Electric Water Division, is a water purification tank. It is usually in the 20,000 to 40,000 gallon range and is a horizontal tank with several baffles. It is used to normally purify sewer water for buildings which cannot connect to a sewer system. These tanks are normally carbon steel with a very high quality chemical resistant epoxy lining. Smith Tank has also developed, to a customer’s requirement, a 50,000 gallon tank called a digester. It is a tank which is insulated and slowly rotates in the horizontal position and produces compost. It is used to dispose of waste from different sources and through its output produces a saleable compost product.
“We currently have 40 employees, each one of them maintaining a high level of training that is ultimately supervised by our quality control experts,” said Blair, Jr. “We have all of our employees undergo certification, as well training sessions year round.”
The company operates in a 94,000 square foot high bay building with offices attached. It uses AutoCAD in its tank designs so that drawings can be emailed to customers quickly for approval. Structural, and if required, seismic calculations are performed on each tank design to determine structural integrity.
“We’ve had some stumbles with this economy,” said Blair, Jr., “and though our growth has stopped a bit, our level of professionalism and quality has never been higher.” ELT