In 1978 Ed McKenna Sr. left his position as Western Region Manager with Worthington Pump Corporation and established McKenna Engineering & Equipment Co., Inc. The Company started with Ed in sales, an inside application engineer and shared secretary. McKenna Engineering was set up as a pilot program for Goulds Pumps Inc. as their first distributor.
 From 1978 to the mid 80’s the company grew from $890,000 to $4,000,000 in sales with 15 people in two offices; Torrance CA and Bakersfield, CA.
Roughly 70% of the pump business was in oil refining and production. The oil crash of the mid 80’s forced the Company to greatly diversify its sales efforts with both products and industries, as well as change the way it operated the business.
Today McKenna Engineering operates as both a stocking distributor and a manufacturer’s representative. The products represented have evolved as well. In 1978 McKenna sold rotating equipment that handled only liquids. The Company now handles rotating equipment for air, gas, liquids, and bulk solids, as well as steam turbines for power generation.
McKenna Engineering provides sales, application engineering, and service to a wide range of industries within the territory. These include, but are not limited to, water and wastewater, environmental, power, chemical, mining, food processing, agriculture, cement, high tech, aerospace, and general industry, as well as oil refining and production.
The Company has always sold from a strong technical base with over 150 years of application engineering experience in rotating equipment.
McKenna Engineering currently employs 24 people and operates out of two offices in California; Carson and Novato, Southern and Northern California respectively. The Carson facility occupies 16,000 square feet and serves as headquarters for the Company. Roughly 12,000 square feet of the facility is dedicated to inventory warehousing, system fabrication, and equipment repair. The Novato office is a sales office supporting the outside field engineers in Northern California. Overall annual sales now exceed $15 million. |
