VIEWPOINT: Kilian Manufacturing builds a lasting legacy in bearings

The founder of Kilian Manufacturing Corporation, Frederick K. Kilian, emigrated from his native Germany in 1907, when he was only 14 years old. After settling in Watertown, he moved to Auburn, where he met and married his wife, Mary. They stayed in Auburn for several years before eventually settling in Syracuse around the close of World War I in 1918. 

Kilian found a thriving manufacturing city awash in opportunities. He took a job at Brown-Lipe-Chapin, one of the city’s largest employers and a national leader in the manufacturing of automotive parts including differentials, transmissions, and clutches. His time at Brown-Lipe-Chapin seems to have provided Frederick Kilian the access and experience that gave him the courage to take a chance on his own American dream. 

Between his day job and his experimentation, Kilian developed and patented the unground bearing. In 1920, he founded Kilian Manufacturing Corp. in the Brayton Industrial Building at 107 N. Franklin St. in Syracuse. 

Materials on the company’s early years are scant, but the few contemporary press reports indicate that Kilian’s company grew quickly. From its earliest days, Kilian Manufacturing produced a wide array of bearings and casters that were utilized in a host of applications. Among the company’s specialties were precision-made bearings for filing cabinets, desk drawers, stoves, and cabinetry, products that are still counted among the company’s impressive product line over a century later. In 1924, the company introduced a state-of-the-art “Ball Bearing Caster” that took the market by storm. The early 1930s saw Kilian Manufacturing secure the rights to exclusively manufacture the official ball bearings for the cars used in the All-American Soap Box Derby, which, at the time, was one of the most popular youth activities in America and, thus, a lucrative contract. 

In short order, the company built a customer base across the U.S. and internationally. By the mid-1930s, Kilian Manufacturing was shipping its precision-made parts to London, Mexico, Australia, South America, and South Africa. 

The growth of the business was such that in 1938, Frederick Kilian announced his intention to build a brand-new, stand-alone factory. After fielding bids from several cities trying to lure the company in the midst of the Great Depression, Kilian Manufacturing decided to stay in Syracuse. In the end, Kilian purchased a two-and-a-half-acre lot on Burnet Avenue. The site had previously been owned by the New York State Railway and was used to store trolley cars for decades. Construction on the new 50,000-square-foot complex, which housed both the manufacturing floor and the company offices, began in May 1939. Inspired by the popular Art Deco aesthetic, the new headquarters cost $100,000 ($2.29 million in 2023) to build and was completed in September 1939 — just a few weeks after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, precipitating World War II.

The war years were good for business for Kilian Manufacturing and its 130 employees, as the need for the company’s products increased exponentially. During the war, Frederick Kilian became a leading proponent of hiring veterans to work in his shop. In 1943, he was appointed to the National Association of Manufacturers Committee on Veterans Employment. This became a long-standing tradition for the company during Kilian’s lifetime. 

During the boom in the post-war years, Kilian opened a ball bearing plant in Hartford Connecticut. In 1947, Kilian undertook an expansion of the Burnet Avenue facility, adding 7,200 square feet to its manufacturing floor. Around this time, Frederick’s sons, Robert and Theodore, joined their father in the family business. Robert eventually became president of the Kilian Steel Ball Co. in Hartford. In 1950, Ted was quoted in a Syracuse Herald article about Kilian’s Soap Box Derby contract, saying that the company manufactured 2.5 million bearings over the 13-year period. 

Over the next two decades, Kilian Manufacturing continued to be a market leader, while the Syracuse plant steadily employed about 200 people. The company prided itself on the stability it provided to its workers, and an overwhelming majority of employees worked there for decades — a practice that continues to this day. Kilian Manufacturing also relied on a tried-and-true employee referral system to maintain consistency and quality when hiring was necessary. An expanding customer base, which came to include exclusive contracts with General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, which was rather fitting considering Frederick Kilian once worked for Brown-Lipe-Chapin, a division of General Motors. By the early 1970s, the company employed about 170 people in the Burnet Avenue facility. 

Like so many American manufacturing firms in the mid-1970s, Kilian underwent significant changes. In 1975, Frederick Kilian, the company’s founder, retired after 55 years at the helm, and sold the business to Torrington Co., a subsidiary of Ingersoll-Rand. The company continued operations uninterrupted during the ownership change. This also marked a sustained period of new challenges in the industry. Fierce competition in the bearings market from foreign firms was, and remains, a major challenge in the industry.

By 1993, the U.S. bearings market was a $3.8 billion business and American firms were losing market share steadily. Due to the customized and highly specialized nature of its work, Kilian Manufacturing weathered these economic shifts that claimed so many local firms during the 1980s and 1990s. Kilian’s leadership team during this period took proactive steps to steady its market share, including utilizing new materials like ceramics. Torrington Co. also took a leading role in calling for protectionist tariffs to help shore up the domestic market. By the end of the 1990s, the largest share of Kilian’s business was comprised of the exclusive bearings manufactured specifically for van-door hinges, which had become an enormous share of the domestic automobile market.

 In 2003, the Timken Company of Canton, Ohio, purchased Kilian’s parent company Torrington Co. for $840 million, making it the third-largest manufacturer of bearings in the world. This acquisition provided a nice bit of historical synergy. Timken Co. was also founded by a German immigrant, Henry Timken, in 1899. Kilian Manufacturing reported $40 million in sales in 2003. The acquisition relationship was short-lived. In 2004, Genstar, a private-equity firm purchased Kilian Manufacturing for an undisclosed sum. Shortly thereafter, Kilian merged with Colfax Power Transmission, forming Altra Industrial Motion Corp.

Today, over a century since its founding, Kilian Manufacturing continues to employ about 160 people in the Burnett Avenue facility, as a subsidiary of Milwaukee–based, Regal Rexnord Corporation, which acquired Altra Industrial in March 2023. The company’s products are utilized in a host of applications from aerospace and automotive to farm and office equipment. As plant manager Don Wierbinski, who started at Kilian in 1979, told the Post-Standard in 2020, the key to Kilian’s success and longevity is its workers and the customized, world-class parts that it produces. In a $40 billion industry, Wierbinski said, “We’re a blip on the map. But, the name Kilian, in terms of the niche of the bearing world that we occupy, is very well respected.”  

A blip on the map, perhaps, but a blip has been proudly pinging right here in Central New York for 102 years and counting.      

Robert J. Searing is curator of history at the Onondaga Historical Association (OHA) (www.cnyhistory.org), located at 321 Montgomery St. in Syracuse.