Pacemaker Steel & Piping

Company History

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On April 1, 1956 at the age of 27, F. Eugene Romano founded Pacemaker Steel in Utica, New York. He was then and still is the sole stockholder of the company.  By 1956, Gene had graduated from Hamilton College, Class of 1949, and served in the U.S. Army Field Artillery during the Korean War.  Upon his honorable discharge, he became the steel buyer for Utica Drop Forge, a company of 3,500 employees heavily involved in the production of jet turbine engines for General Electric, Pratt-Whitney and Curtiss Wright.  He served as an industry advisor to the U.S. Navy Munitions Board and the Aircraft Production Resource Agency from 1952-1953 and was instrumental in the development and founding of Special Metals, which increased the life of early military jet aircraft engines from sixteen hours to over 100 hours.

 

Pacemaker's initial business plan was to serve the central New York State tool and die industry with a complete range of tool and die steels.  Due to the early success of the endeavor, a full line of cold finished carbon steel bar was added in 1959.

 

In 1960, Pacemaker became a full line general distributor for Reynolds-Metals, one of only three in the entire state of New York north of the New York City metropolitan area.  Pacemaker was growing quickly as a reliable major supplier to the healthy manufacturing that spread across New York from Poughkeepsie to Buffalo.

 

In 1968, Pacemaker purchased a competitor in Binghamton and then added a full line of hot-rolled shapes, sheet and plate to its inventory, along with cold-rolled and galvanized sheet. The company kept growing, always employing its founder's principle of providing consistent high quality products, at a fair price, delivered on time.

 

1969 saw the acquisition of the Charles Millar Supply Company, which was founded in 1861.  From that time, Millar has been a wholly owned division of Pacemaker and continues to this day to be a well-known, highly regarded distributor of pipe, values and fittings, and provides a vast array of products, both standard and specials.  Henry Millar continued as President (a fourth generation Millar) until illness forced his retirement in 1980.  The entire Millar staff continued with Pacemaker until retirement and always provided excellent, knowledgeable, and helpful service to all piping companies.  As of 2010, we're happy that we still have one Millar hand on deck since we merged in 1969.

 

Pacemaker also has grown considerably to this date principally because of the expert, knowledgeable service given to all our customers by a great group of employees – at all levels from the drivers and warehouse personnel all the way to the managing Vice Presidents.

 

Because of the efforts of the management staff, the company has been recognized many times over for its financial aid to colleges, hospitals, community foundations, municipal organizations and over 100 benevolent groups in upstate New York.

 

Some statistics indicate the average life of a business is seven years.  As of 2010, our Millar pipe division is 149 years old and Pacemaker now has 54 years under its belt and continues to grow because it stops at nothing to please its loyal customers.