History

Corry Rubber is a privately-held, 100% family-owned Pennsylvania corporation founded by Ernest Ferro Sr. in August, 1961 with only three presses, one mill, and one 3″ extruder. Ferro, a rubber chemist and the son of early 20th century Italian immigrants, moved his family, including wife and three young kids, to Corry, Pennsylvania from Youngstown, Ohio, taking extreme risk in the process.

Then and now

2,800 square feet in 1961, 142,000 today. Four employees then, nearly 60 now. Three presses and one mill have become injection, compression, and transfer molding across the floor, plus a mixing operation that supplies our own molding as well as other manufacturers. There was no testing in 1961; there is now an ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accredited laboratory in the building.

One line does not change: Corry, Pennsylvania. Every expansion above happened on the same campus in the same small town, under the same family. Nothing was consolidated offshore, and no part of the process was sold off to a holding company.

The archive

Photographs and clippings from the plant and the buildings it occupies, in rough order, starting with the locomotive works company, Climax Locomotive, that built them.

The long shop building on West Main Street, seen across the rail yard that once served it.

A finished geared locomotive outside the shop, with the company's trade painted across the brick: locomotives, engines, cars.

A period illustration of the whole works at its peak, drawn looking north across West Main Street.

Inside the erecting shop: locomotives under construction down both sides of the bay, under the same roof trusses and travelling crane that are still overhead.

The machine shop and its crews. Martin E. Hansen Collection.

A Climax lettered for the Y.L.C., photographed beside the plant before it shipped.

The founding, in the local paper: Ernest Ferro of Girard, Ohio and Al Xander lease the Aero building on West Main Street, with a $25,000 loan from the Corry Area Industrial Development Corporation. Nine employees projected for year one.

Corry Rubber Corporation on West Main Street in the early years.

Twenty-five years in. Ernest Ferro Sr. accepts a plaque from Clifford Moats of the company social fund. Four employees at the start, seventy by then, and the Climax building in use.

Ernest B. Ferro on a year of new equipment: a Banbury that raised raw-rubber mixing capacity 200 percent, and a cold-feed extruder that cut labour content 60 percent.

Rubber & Plastics News: a 75-worker firm gaining market share after several million dollars of equipment, and no intention of building factories anywhere else.

A newspaper columnist's New Year piece, with a few lines about Ernie Ferro, who ran the plant and once argued with his business partner for a month.

The whole company, outside the West Main Street office.

Concord School's third and fourth graders on what Corry Rubber makes, from a Corry Journal page the company sponsored: coil-spring cushions, tailgate cushions, and, according to one pre-first grader, paper.

Years-of-service awards at Perry's Inn, twenty-five years for Ernie Ferro among them. Long service is still the pattern on the floor.

QS 9000 certification, the first of the formal quality systems the plant runs. The certificate is held by the people who earned it.

The gantry between buildings, left over from the rail sidings that served the locomotive works.

Ernest D. Ferro Sr., rubber chemist. He started Corry Rubber Corporation on August 15, 1961 in partnership with Albert Xander, bought out that interest in 1982, and handed the company to his sons in 1996.

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405 West Main Street was the Climax Manufacturing Company's locomotive works, later the Climax Locomotive Works, which built more than a thousand geared steam locomotives here between 1888 and 1928. CRC works in those buildings today. Climax Locomotives

Staying power

Parts qualified at CRC tend to stay at CRC, because the tooling, the compound, and the people who know both are in one place. Many of the programs on the floor today have been in production for three to four decades.

Still family-run

Corry Rubber is still owned and run by the Ferro family, and the technical leadership has been here for decades rather than quarters. That has a practical consequence for customers: the person who answers a hard question about a compound is usually the person who developed it, and they will still be here at the next design review.