Perfex Radiator Company

Ancestry US

The Perfex Radiator Company, of Racine, established business in Chicago in 1910 and was removed to this city on the 12th of October, 1912, a location being secured on Fifteenth Street, at the Northwestern railway tracks, where they occupy a three-story brick building one hundred and twenty by one hundred and ten feet. The business was established in Chicago under the name of the Aero Sheet Metal Works and afterward was incorporated there under the name of the Automobile Radiator & Parts Manufacturing Company in 1911. With the removal to Racine the name was changed to the Perfex Radiator Company under which style operations have since been continued. The company is now erecting a new building along the St. Paul railway tracks, on the block bounded by Holmes Avenue, Eighteenth Street, Hett Avenue and the railroad. This building is two hundred and fifty-five by sixty-live feet, a one-story saw-tooth structure of modern construction. It is a building erected about a steel frame and was planned for the purpose used, so that it meets the needs of the company in every particular. The company manufactures a patented radiator used on any internal combustion engine, farm tractors, commercial trucks and automobiles. The radiator was invented by F. M. Opitz and the patent was transferred to and has been perfected by the company. With the completion of the new building the plant will have a capacity of four hundred radiators per day and employ two hundred or more men, mostly skilled labor, the remainder being semi-skilled. The product is marketed by selling direct to manufacturers and is used by every representative manufacturer of farm tractors in the United States. It is best known perhaps through its use by truck manufacturers, including the Jeffery Quad and others. When the business was removed to Racine it was in its infancy and the plant has doubled every year since the removal was made, the trade growing with most satisfying rapidity. The company was incorporated upon coming to Wisconsin and the present officers are as follows: Fred M. Opitz, president: Edgar P. Wolf, vice president and treasurer: and P. Wolf. secretary.

Source: Stone, Fanny S. Racine, Belle City of the lakes, and Racine County, Wisconsin : a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement; Chicago: S. J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1916.

Ancestry US

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