The Legend Begins – The Early Days of Tutco!

Tutco is now one of the largest and most diverse electric heater companies in the world, but it started with humble beginnings and originally was not even making electric heat. Getting into electric heat came by chance. 

The company now known as Tutco started in 1938 as the H.W. Tuttle Company in Adrian, Michigan, USA. The company was founded by H.W. Tuttle Sr. and Madeline “Ma” Tuttle. Ma Tuttle was very accomplished, with a successful business in real estate, and was an amateur golfer and bridge player with two children. She had become friends with Henry Ford, where she learned of his need for an electric resistor supplier for the Ford Motor Company. After learning this, H.W. and Ma founded their company to supply Mr. Ford with resistors. 

They remained a resistor company for a few years until the U.S. military contacted them during WWII to help solve a problem. They wanted large resistors, not to do the normal job of resistors, but rather to use the resistance to generate heat to solve a problem they were having. The bomb door mechanisms and hydraulic systems were freezing up at the high altitudes, and they needed to keep them heated so they would operate properly. This was the first of many times where this company would “Think Outside the Box” and offer an unconventional solution to a unique problem. After the war, the H.W. Tuttle Company shifted from resistors to appliance heating elements both small and large—this was the beginning of the company that we are today. 

Around 1960, Harold Wesley “Tut” Tuttle Jr. became the President of the company, and Ma Tuttle became Treasurer and Chairman of the Board. The company merged with Gould Inc. in 1968 and became Gould Heating Elements. Gould moved to Cookeville, TN, USA in 1972. In 1978, Adams Industries bought the company from Gould. After the purchase, they changed the name to Tutco, and that has been the name for over four and a half decades now. In April 1994, Tutco became a member of the Smiths Group, of London, England and has been ever since. 

Tutco is now a major supplier to both the appliance industry—with an emphasis on electric dryer heating elements—and both the commercial and residential HVAC industries, supplying in some capacity to most of the major manufacturers in both industries. Tutco also has a large and strong presence in the industrial market with four divisions manufacturing many different types of industrial heaters for a wide variety of processes and uses. We now have several manufacturing locations in the United States, along with manufacturing locations in Canada, Mexico, and China. Tutco’s goal is not to be your supplier but rather to be your electric heat partner and help you come up with solutions, whether they are conventional or require us to “Think Outside the Box.” 

Next month we will look at the divisions Tutco has added over the years and what they can offer you.