McDowells Heating and Cooling
817 Jerusalem Rd. / Scotch Plains, NJ 07076 / (908) 233-8139

Since 1928 McDowells has been serving Northeastern New Jersey's Comfort Needs

McDowells has been servicing various Union County communities since 1928. We would like to share with our friends and neighbors a little history and memories about our community and company. For your enjoyment and interest we will take quick tour in time to when McDowells was founded in 1928 by F. B. McDowell.

1928 was a special year. It was the year McDowells was founded. Nineteen hundred and twenty-eight was before so many conveniences we take for granted today, before homes had air conditioning, electric refrigeration, and automatic heating.

In 1928 oil heated less than 2% of all the single-family homes in America. Most Union County residents bought coal for their furnaces to burn, and ice to keep their refrigerators cold. Dealers delivered ice and coal to homes on a regular basis.

Prices of 1928 seem low as we look back on them: our local newspapers from that year carried ads for grapefruit 6 for 25 cents, sheets $1.33 each, bath towels 27 cents each, women's shoes $4.24, little girls' dresses $1.95.

Remember 1928 for the opening of the Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing, both connecting New Jersey and Staten Island. Remember 1928 for the start of work on Newark Airport, within three years to be known as the "busiest airport in the world."

In 1928F. B. McDowell had the idea for today's "energy management." His ideas may have begun ten years before when he worked in the oil fields in Texas, or sometime in the early 1920's when he traveled around the tri-state area building and installing pumps in the first gas stations. In 1928 most people added their own "lube oil" to their cars. McDowell began his business by giving people what they needed. And what they needed in 1928, that first year of the business, was lubricating oil for their cars and kerosene for their cookstoves and lamps.

Each day McDowell and his teenage son, Howard, would pick up the kerosene at the refinery, then drive their truck to make deliveries all through Union County and south into Middlesex. That first truck was unheated. Howard remembers how hard it was to keep warm on winter days especially when the roads were not kept plowed and clear of snow as they are today. A major change came to the business about 1934 when McDowell installed his own storage tanks in Garwood, one for kerosene and one for fuel oil that railroad tank cars delivered.

No more of those endless trips to the refinery for another load. In about 1946, the year Howard came home from World War II, McDowell began to teach his two sons how to install heating equipment. Richard would come home from school, get on his bike, ride to the job where they were working, thread pipe by hand, then put his bike in the back of the truck and the three McDowells would go home for supper. F. B. McDowell established a tradition that the firm upholds today.

 The McDowells tradition of customer service calls for top-notch work, keeping up the reputation for total reliability the company has earned throughout the community for nearly eighty years. Just as grandfather McDowell was ready to give people what they needed in 1928, and ready with new ideas on better ways to give that service, today's McDowells management team is prepared to take care of its customers with today's needs and with the newest methods.

© McDowells 2005