Tough Times for Victor Insulators

Tough times for a Victor mainstay

By Mike Maslanik, staff writer

Charles Don Butler has fond memories of working summers and vacations for Victor Insulators Inc. while he was in high school.

"I still remember the $20 bill I got in my paycheck," said Butler, now 91. It was one of the first $20 bills he'd ever seen.

Starting in the mid-1930s, he worked in various departments; among his duties: winding green threading into spools for insulators to molding slabs of wet clay into shapes used for transformers. Then he was drafted by the Army after the outbreak of World War II.

Generations of Butler's family owed their livelihood to the plant. His grandfather, Ralph, and father, Charles, were foremen on the factory floor and an uncle, Ralph Jr., was a sales manager.

Butler never returned to the plant after the war. He went to college and worked as an engineer and expediter for Boston-based Stone and Webster Engineering. There, he often made purchases from Victor Insulators. He always had respect for the company's products and what it gave to the town.

"They've done real good to keep going for a long as they have," he said.

The town recently paid homage to the enterprising telegraph operator who launched the company that would become Victor Insulators 110 years ago.

At its peak, Victor Insulators was one of the largest electrical insulator companies in the world, churning out products by the hundreds of thousands, and was one of the area's leading employers. Lately, though, it has fallen on hard times and is struggling to reorganize in bankruptcy court.

'Substantial losses' The company makes insulators, such as those on utility poles, that range in size from a few ounces to hundreds of pounds. Manufactured mainly from silica porcelain, the insulators can handle electrical currents from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of volts.

Today, Victor Insulators employs about 120 workers in a roughly 280,000-square-foot facility on Maple Avenue in the village.

In September, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal court in Rochester.

According to the testimony of Chief Executive Officer Ira Knickerbocker in federal bankruptcy court, Victor Insulators has been hobbled by aggressive foreign competition, rising natural gas prices and increased transportation costs.

Earlier this decade, Knickerbocker said the company "experienced substantial losses." It cut white-collar salaries by 20 percent and renegotiated its labor agreement with that union that represents its factory workers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 86, to reduce salaries, also by 20 percent, according to court documents.

Starting in 2002 and 2003, the company began to have trouble paying into its employee pension plan. Knickerbocker declined to comment on the bankruptcy process and referred all questions to Dan Brown, a Buffalo attorney. Brown could not be reached for comment despite several attempts.

From the standpoint of Ontario County, Victor Insulators has been a model company.

"They were paying county loans on time and they created the jobs they were supposed to create," said Michael Manikowski, director of Ontario County Economic Development. "We've had a great working relationship with them over the years."

The company has taken out four loans from the Ontario County Revolving Loan Fund, meeting all job creation goals, Manikowski said, although the recent downturn caused the company to slash some of the new jobs.

In 1985, the company repaid $375,000 on a loan to purchase equipment as part of a $6.47 million project. The next year, it closed out payment on a $75,000 loan for more equipment purchases.

In 1995, Victor Insulators repaid a $150,000 loan, which was part of a $450,000 refinancing effort.

It is still repaying the latest loan, $150,000 for a $5.45 million refinancing. So far, the company has paid $69,247.25 back on this last loan.

Manikowski said the county is willing to work with the company as it goes through reorganization.

"It happens," he said. "This is a tough economy, it's a tough, competitive environment for them."

In 2003, company officials traveled to Washington, D.C., to make their case to the U.S. Department of Commerce against unfair trade practices like "dumping," when foreign competitors slash prices to flood the market with their product.

Victor Insulators won that case, but demand for insulators fell dramatically due to a decrease in capital projects.

Fishers red clay Meanwhile, as the company finds its footing, the town of Victor and descendants of founder Fred M. Locke celebrated his legacy recently.

On Saturday, Nov. 28, town officials and Locke's family members attended the unveiling of a historical marker about 30 feet off Route 96, between Plastermill and Lynaugh roads. It marks the site where Locke's 14-room Victorian home and laboratory once stood. Locke lived and continued his experiments in the home until his death in 1930.

The home was demolished in 1964 in order to make room for the East Victor bridge.

On hand for the dedication were his granddaughter Sybil-Ann Locke Kimble, great-grandson James M. Kimble and great-great-grandson James Kimble, all of Canandaigua.

Locke was "a man of vision and a man who brought notoriety and economic growth to the town of Victor," Town Historian Babette Huber said.

For Sybil-Ann Locke Kimble, the dedication was a long time coming.

"My father, James L. Locke, would be so proud," she said. "He worked so hard to keep the house from being torn down and he really wanted to have this plaque."

While working as a telegraph operator for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad in Victor, Fred Locke found that he had trouble receiving messages in wet, rainy weather. Impatient business owners complained to his bosses, who often accused him of sleeping on the job.

Naturally curious, and eager to get his boss off his back, Locke looked into the problem and discovered that damp glass insulators in the telegraph lines caused the electric current to short out, thus losing the message.

After tinkering with different types of insulators, Locke developed the "triple petticoat" design, which solved the wet wire problem for good, Huber said.

In 1889, Locke and John Lapp, a childhood friend from Honeoye Falls, received a patent for their invention.

Three years later, Locke and two partners started Fred M. Locke and Co. and made electrical and telegraph parts in a small factory in Fishers.

In 1895, Locke made a name for himself by designing a porcelain insulator, made from red clay dug from Fishers. The insulator proved so effective that it was used for the first power line to Buffalo from a newly built power plant in Niagara Falls.

Soon after, Locke got out of the electrical supply business to focus on building his insulators. In 1898, he opened the Locke Insulator Manufacturing Co., on Maple Avenue in Victor. The new plant had 80 employees and made more than 100,000 of the porcelain insulators for two California power companies.

After a fire destroyed the original factory in 1902, Locke built an new one at the current site in Victor with the help of $2,500 raised by area residents. When the plant reopened two years later, it employed 140 people, making it the largest insulator factory in the world at that time.

Over the years, Locke received 61 patents, mostly for various insulators, but he also developed a heat-resistant glass still used for glass stovetops and windows in space vehicles, including space shuttles. The patent was licensed to Corning Glass in 1925 and was used to make Pyrex Flameware percolators, double boilers and dishes starting in 1936.

Huber said Victor had Locke to thank for its first electric lights. The generator he used to power his home laboratory also ran electric arc lights along Coville Street in the village.

About five years after Locke died, the Locke Insulator Manufacturing Co. changed its name to Victor Insulators Inc. and changed hands several times until it was purchased by Knickerbocker and Ronald J. Graczyk, a former president of the company.

On Oct. 1, Ontario County retained the services of bankruptcy attorney Jason DiPronzio to work with Victor Insulators to recover the money on the latest loan. Assistant Ontario County Attorney Kristen Thorsness said that bankruptcy court has not issued a deadline for payment.

In the meantime, the county is ready to support Victor Insulators every step of the way, including helping it find and train new employees during the bankruptcy process.

"The county on a whole is interested in working with Victor Insulators," Thorsness said. "All hope is not lost."

Victor Insulators: A timeline 1898 Fred M. Locke founded Locke Insulator Manufacturing Co.

1902 Fire destroys original factory

1904 35 Victor residents raise $2,500 to rebuild plant

1930 Fred M. Locke dies at his home in Victor

1964 Locke's home and laboratory is torn down to make room for the East Victor bridge

1984 Victor Insulators Inc. forms to buy the factory and its assets from Brown Boveri Electric Co., a subsidiary of Switzerland-based Brown Boveri Limited, which was seeking to close manufacturing operations in the United States

Sept. 16, 2008 Victor Insulators Inc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal bankruptcy court

Nov. 29, 2008 Town of Victor dedicates a state historical marker at the site of Fred Locke's home along Route 96.