Maker encyclopedia
Estados Unidos · Rheem est. 1925 (Emeryville, California) · Ruud est. 1897 · merger 1960 · Paloma (Japan) since 1988 · Atlanta
The Rheem brothers — Richard and Donald, sons of a former president of Standard Oil of California — started in 1925 in Emeryville (California) manufacturing galvanized steel drums, and on January 22, 1930 they incorporated Rheem Manufacturing Company. With the purchase of boiler and tank factories they entered the gas water heater market in 1931, their major business: in 1936 they opened a plant in Sydney and in 1941 they were the largest manufacturer of automatic water heaters in the United States.
After the war (ammunition) and the vitrified depot of 1954, in 1956 they launched “Rheemaire”, their first central air‑conditioning and heating systems for homes. In 1960 they absorbed Ruud Manufacturing, founded in 1897 by the Norwegian Edwin Ruud, inventor of the first automatic gas water heater with storage, and since then Rheem and Ruud are twin brands; in August 1970 they began producing heat pumps in Fort Smith (Arkansas).
The company passed to Pace Industries in 1984 and in 1988 to the Japanese Paloma, of Nagoya, which keeps it as a subsidiary with headquarters in Atlanta. In 2021 it bought Friedrich, the classic window‑unit brand from San Antonio, and in 2024 Nortek Global HVAC; it celebrated its centenary in 2025 with about $6 billion in revenue and 14 000 employees.
The centennial website cites three founding brothers (William, Richard and Donald) in front of the two from Wikipedia.
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