Stonedril Water Well Drills

In the summer of 1966 Vulcan acquired the assets of the Stone Drilling Machine Company of Daisy, TN, north of Chattanooga. The principal had passed away. The product was a water well drill which stone had manufactured for many years. It was another attempt on Vulcan’s part to diversify its product line; even with the opening up of the offshore industry, Vulcan’s business was very cyclic and it swung from loss to profit from one year to the next.

A description of the water well drill, from Vulcan’s literature.

In the South, when you’ve bought the truck, you know you’re in business: Stonedril’s truck, complete with camper top, ready to head down the road from Vulcan’s Chattanooga facility.

Vulcan made some immediate changes to the product line. For openers, it renamed it the “Stonedril,” with the “groovy” radial logo you see in the picture at the top. More significantly, Vulcan’s initial reason for building the Special Products Division plant in West Palm Beach was to manufacture the drills for what looked to be a more robust market. It was also built to provide fabricating capabilities which were necessary for the product; until the 1990’s Chattanooga’s fabrication capabilities were rudimentary.

Download the Product Literature for the Stonedril Water Well Drill

With all that done, the Stonedril product line never reached its potential. Doubtless there were many competitors, and the hydraulic machines were starting to take over from cable machines like the Stonedril.

By the beginning of the Unix era, the Stonedril product line was pretty much done for. The Special Products Division moved on to offshore leaders and other products.