Our People
A Letter from Zephyr’s General Manager
Zephyr Engineering had humble beginnings. The company began in early 1993 and I joined the team in 1995. it was a four man shop, fabricating OEM dust collectors and fume extractors. We were working out of what was essentially an automotive repair shop from the 1950s. The shop was small, but we managed to squeeze in our punch press, press brake, cold saw, and a couple welders — with enough room left over for an adequate assembly and testing station.
It was in these early days that I first met John Martin and his son, Justin. John was a Sales Representative and Designer at A.B. McLaughin, and he would come by routinely to pick up cherry screens that we had punched for them. Justin worked for Zephyr Engineering part time running our punch press in the evening while attending college during the day. John joined the Zephyr team in August of 1995 and brought with him a wealth of information.
Our growth rate at this time was uncommon because the three owners were very aggressive. We had already moved to a larger facility on Indian School Road, and with John’s sales experience we were quickly growing out of this space as well. We had expanded into an annex of approximately 15,000 square feet, which gave us a total of 35,000 square feet in our manufacturing facility.
In 1998, the owners set their sights on a larger building and in March of 1999 Zephyr Engineering took ownership of the Mead Paper Building — with 100,000 square feet of available space. This gave us the capacity to ride the manufacturing wave for almost a decade.
In 2008, things began to taper off and Zephyr reorganized and downsized to match reduced demand. That brought us to our current location at 1337 Madison Street NE in Salem. We recently added another 6,000 square feet to our space, bringing us up to 20,000 square feet in our facility.
Unfortunately, John is no longer with us, but we continue to persevere in his stead. We are a family-oriented business and we feel that if you treat people with honestly, integrity, and respect that they will do the same for you. This is the same philosophy that we have towards our customers.
We pride ourselves on our superb craftsmanship. We are the stewards of our profession and are willing and able to take your project to the next level.
