One Family Proves That Necessity Results In Over Forty Years Of Innovation
To fully understand the impact TYMCO has had on the asphalt industry you have to go back nearly fifty years to three brothers who worked together building roads at Young Brothers Construction.
B.W., Raymond (first president and founder of ISSA), and F.M. Young learned that if the base of asphalt roads were solidly built, then the surface could be repaired inexpensively without having to repave. The team came up with a truck-mounted process of resealing asphalt roads with a layer of emulsified asphalt and sand called “Slurry Seal”. The key for the emulsion to stick was that the road needed to be cleaned. If the emulsion was not able to fill the cracks, the weather would cause those cracks to reappear. The mechanical brooms available at the time would only clean off the top surface, but not get in the cracks.
After experiencing the slow and arduous process for cleaning the roads, B.W., with the help of his brothers, invented a machine which would help make the process faster, a Regenerative Air Sweeper. The new sweeper blasted air through the cracks and then vacuumed it up without refilling the surface imperfections with debris. Simply working together to solve a need, B.W. and his brothers created a machine with multiple applications for improving the existing technology of cleaning paved areas, instantly changing the market.
Learning that the machine was even more valuable as a standalone product, in the late sixties the brothers parted ways and formed three separate companies. F.M. retained the family construction business that spawned the idea, Raymond created Slurry Seal International, and B.W. incorporated and federally registered TYMCO, The Young Manufacturing Company, focusing on the machine he created.
When B.W. passed in 1973, Kenneth, B.W.’s son, left school to work at TYMCO. Gary, Kenneth’s brother, came to work for the family business in 1977 after graduating from Texas A&M University with a Mechanical Engineering degree. At 91 years old, Sophie, B.W.’s wife, is not involved in the day to day activities at TYMCO, but she still comes in every week to sign the paychecks and keep watch over her husband’s legacy.
Today, TYMCO makes eight models of street sweepers that are used on surfaces ranging from parking lots to airport runways. They may be different sizes and shapes, but they are all based on B.W.’s initial vision of the Regenerative Air System.
For more information on TYMCO visit their website www.tymco.com.
