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Chapter 3 of Roc’s History
Hi there friend! Welcome to ROC Carbon’s continuing history blog! We do hope that you learn that if there is one thing that ROC Carbon has proven one thing, beyond their consummate professionalism, great prices, and quick turn around with their products, is that they know how to survive almost anything. Don’t forget that when you are done with the blog to keep reading to learn about this month’s featured item: Mechanical Seal Faces!
No matter how well you prepare and plan, there will always be lows to go along with the highs. With the Mid-Eighties and Texas in the grip of an oil bust, ROC Carbon once again had to pivot and learn how to save their company and rise above adversity. For the newly cemented CEO, Pam had to face a daunting challenge – she had to save her father’s company amid the turmoil of the Eighties.
Pam had only one goal in mind – not to lay off anybody. To Pam and Al to save the company was to keep the employees. To ROC Carbon, the employees are the company. Just what could be done to keep the company going and still keep the employees. After thinking on it, she sat down with Alan and together they came up with an ingenious plan.
At ROC Carbon, no one is bigger or better than another, they were (and still are) a giant extended family, so if one person must sacrifice, then everyone was going to sacrifice. With that thinking, Pam and Al enacted their plan. The company would transition to a four day work week. They would lose one day of pay, but they would keep the benefits going. The employees could choose to take either Monday or Friday off and on those three days off, if need be, they could find some work if they needed more money and or they could just be with their family – whatever was important to them. And what was important to Pam? A loyal staff. They had been loyal to her through everything and she wanted to be loyal to them. So that’s what they did.
When families are faced with difficult times, they can go one of two ways. They can either fall apart or come closer together. ROC Carbon learned to treasure their time together and became even closer. As ROC Carbon has learned time and time again, it cannot always be night and that the dawn does eventually come. As the bust pushed the ROC family closer together, as they came out the other side with the boom they learned to really appreciate what they had – and appreciate they did.
They decided to celebrate the little things and Pam came up with great way to do just that. For example, on payday, she would go around with a Payday candy bar and hand one to everybody. In Pam’s mind she thought “Oh, this is gonna blow their minds” and blow their minds it did. They loved it. And the ROC Carbon family still do this. When they meet goals they all get together and have celebration luncheons.
ROC Carbon always understands the assignment, how to turn adversity into triumph and to find the silver lining in everything.
To Be Continued …
Mechanical Seal Faces
OEM’s, end users and repair shops all over the United States rely on ROC Carbon for high quality, and fast delivery of custom mechanical seal faces. ROC’s 65+ years of experience machining carbon seals means your mechanical seal faces will be delivered on-time, accurate, and ready to install in service.
ROC starts with high performance carbon graphite seal grade materials. Our staff can help you select the correct grade for your application, or determine the material from a worn or damaged seal to ensure proper seal performance. Practically all these materials are available for immediate use in our manufacturing process.
ROC Carbon, after 65 years, is capable to manufacture many types of seal geometry including drive notches/ears, hydropads, offset inner diameters, and seal outer diameters up to 17”. We offer this service for quantities as few as 1 to over 1,000. ROC also offers metal machining services for all the related seal components.
The final step in the manufacturing process is lapping the sealing face. Our lapping machines are capable of lapping smaller seals to within 1 helium light band, and lapping larger seals up to 14” diameter.
ROC’s years of experience also enables us to manufacture most mechanical seal faces in one business day as a standard offering, getting your equipment repaired in as little time as possible.
