Spinoffs are part of the legacy at Cline Hose & Hydraulics

Cline Hose & Hydraulics is moving to the suburbs after more than 60 years near downtown Greenville.

Its tendency to help spawn other small businesses, however, probably won't change.

The brothers who own the family business, Scott and Glenn Cline, have demonstrated an entrepreneurial bent – as did their late grandfather, who founded the company 67 years ago, and their retired father, who worked in it for many years.

Cline Hose & Hydraulics employs about 40 people at its complex on both sides of Buncombe Street, including welders, machinists and hydraulic technicians.

The company buys rubber and stainless steel hose in bulk, then cuts and fabricates it to specification, mostly for industrial customers.

It also repairs hydraulic cylinders, pumps, motors and valves and coolant pumps.

Over the years, it has played a role in the formation of at least five other local companies.

Two other local industrial supply firms -- Continental Engines and Carson's Nut, Bolt & Tool Co. – trace their origins back to lines of business originally launched by the Cline brothers’ grandfather.

A Rexnord Corp. factory in Taylors that makes drive shafts and clutches for steel and paper mills used to be the Cline family's mill products division.

Since Scott and Glenn Cline took over the family business 13 years ago, they have created, or helped to create, separate enterprises that manufacture poultry cooling systems and machines that crush computer hard drives.

They also helped improve a manufacturing process at General Electric Co.'s local power turbine plant, one of their big customers.

"We’re problem solvers," Scott Cline said.

Another customer of the Clines is Kawasaki Rail Car of Yonkers, NY, which makes rail cars for big-city subway systems such as those in New York and Washington, D.C.

Cline Hose & Hydraulics supplies the hose used in the rail cars’ air brakes.

"So if you’ve been on those subways you’ve been stopped by a Cline hose," Scott Cline said.

The Cline brothers also operate a retail counter where walk-ins can place orders for jobs as small as repairing a garden hose.

HUMBLE ORIGINS

The story of what is now Cline Hose & Hydraulics begins with the late Nesbit "Neb" Cline Sr.

He grew in the Connie Maxwell Children's Home, an orphanage in Greenwood, after losing his parents to a flu epidemic in 1914.

After working as a field representative for Sears, Roebuck & Co., Neb Cline Sr. began selling motor oil and tires out of his garage at 8 Woodbine Road in 1948.

Later, he switched to distributing hydraulic hose and clutches for the maintenance of heavy equipment.

He operated the business from a Quonset hut on Wade Hampton Boulevard before moving it to the Buncombe Street area in the early 1950s.

Neb Cline Jr., the founder's son, said sales grew along with Greenville's business community.

Customers over the years included Daniel Construction Co., Greenville Concrete Co. and the local firm that made Texize Liquid Cleaner.

"Everybody needed hose for maintenance on their equipment," Neb Cline Jr. recalled.

He remembers landing GE as a customer when the global conglomerate came to Greenville in 1968 to make power turbines.

Neb Cline Jr. retired from the business after the mill products division was sold in 1998, but he still advises his sons at age 72.

HARD DRIVE CRUSHER

The Cline brothers began making machines to crush computer hard drives a decade ago.

The idea came from local businessman Charles Smith, a former Nokia sales manager who at the time was planning to start a business to recycle computers.

Smith said he was looking for a way to dispose of the data on the computers properly and was working on a prototype hard drive crusher when he stopped by Cline Hose & Hydraulics for parts.

The Clines ended up working on the prototype and improving it with the help of computer-aided design (CAD) technology, Smith recalled.

Since then, the Clines have manufactured the hard drive crusher at their Buncombe Road complex and Smith has sold it from offices at the South Carolina Technology and Aviation Center.

"We shook hands and agreed on how it would work, and it's worked great," Smith said.

The base model costs $9,500, and Smith said he's sold more than 500 of the machines to corporations, federal agencies, defense installations, universities and nonprofit organizations.

Customers include the Central Intelligence Agency, Google, Microsoft and Bank of America, he said.

The 85-pound machine is powered by a hydraulic pump and plugs into a standard outlet.

"You hold down a button and 10,000 pounds of pressure comes slowly through a ram that's pressed down on the hard drive," Smith said.

Working with the Clines is "old school," he said. "It's trust. It's a handshake."

MOVING IN SEPTEMBER

As their company needed additional space over the years, the Clines expanded at the same Buncombe Street location.

Today, their sprawling complex on both sides of the street takes up more than 70,000 square feet on almost five acres.

And that has led to inefficiencies such as six different water meters.

"There have been a lot of add-ons over the years," Glenn Cline said.

He and his brother plan to streamline the business by relocating it in September to a single, 42,000-square foot building at 155 Verdin Road off of Butler Road in Mauldin.

"The main reason is to try and get us all under one roof and offer better service to our customers," Scott Cline said.

The move will open up the company's existing property near Heritage Green for redevelopment.

Earle Furman, a commercial real estate executive who is marketing the property, said he thinks urban-style apartments or retail would be good uses for it.