Troy Pickering at SIMFLO and SitePro announcement. Staff photo.
When you turn on the water or go to the gas station, you expect things to work.
Many of the custom-made pumps making it possible – moving massive amounts of drinking water, salt water, wastewater, crude oil and industrial chemicals – are made in Lubbock.
For the longest time that meant people from around the world flew to Lubbock to watch a test. Now they can do that remotely.
Lubbock-based companies SIMFLO and SitePro held a joint announcement Monday for an “industry-changing, first-of-its-kind” pump-testing facility on 26th Street just east of Interstate 27.
“This facility is the world’s largest vertical turbine test facility, and that’s pretty impressive in itself,” said Troy Pickering, SIMFLO’s chief executive.
A vertical turbine is the kind of pump that can work in extreme circumstances. And Lubbock is a worldwide leader in making them – with several companies either making pumps or manufacturing the parts.
“We’ll be bringing people in from all over the country and all over the world to test equipment out of this facility,” Pickering told LubbockLights.com after the announcement. “You travel all over the country and all over the world; a lot of people always ask you, ‘Are you from Lubbock, Texas?’ Because there’s a lot of pump manufacturing done at Lubbock.”
Is it really that big? We asked David Bateman, SitePro’s chief executive.
“Oh, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry per year. These pumps are going to be sold all over the globe,” Bateman said.
“If you talk about the pump industry in general, there’s three cities in the U.S. that really come to mind; Lubbock, Fresno, California and Orlando, Florida. Lubbock is kind of a pump hub of the of the U.S.,” Bateman said.
‘Driving a lot of our desires’
Pickering said, “Everybody wants to turn on their tap water. These types of pumps are what is supplying that water. … Water movement is critical to U.S. infrastructure.”
It’s the same for oil and gas.
“We’ve got customers that operate offshore oil and gas platforms. Crude oil is what it is. It’s what’s driving a lot of our desires today – electricity, automobiles, things of that nature,” Pickering said.
These are not off-the-shelf pumps, although SIMFLO makes those too.
Bateman said, “These pumps are pre-specified by engineering firms.”
They have to work, sure. But they must perform at certain pressures, or so many gallons per second or certain temperatures. Or all of the above.
Before a city spends millions of dollars on custom-made pumps, they need to be tested. That meant a trip to West Texas.
“They want to make sure it’s going to do exactly what they need,” Pickering said.
That’s where SitePro helped SIMFLO make a big change.
“Engineers or whoever would come and witness the test in person. We now give them advanced capabilities on performance, data analytics and the ability to remotely witness the test,” Bateman said.
Pickering still plans for two or three customers per month to show up in person at the 2,000-horsepower test facility.
“We’ve got people eating and staying in hotel rooms and buying fuel and entertainment. … But there’s several companies around town that are doing exactly what we’re doing – bringing people in from other parts of the country,” Pickering said.
“This lab will give people the ability to do things that most pump manufacturers don’t have the ability to do. And furthermore, it’s all right here in Lubbock,” Pickering said.
Customers can watch the tests but also run the pumps by remote control.
“Traditionally, SIMFLO would have gone to look in the Silicon Valley area. Through some relationships in town, we caught word of SitePro. … We found out that SitePro had all these capabilities right here in Lubbock,” Pickering said.
“It’s not the products, it’s the people that make a company,” Pickering said. “That’s really where the success is – in the employees.”
‘Really a testament’
“This is a one-of-a-kind facility,” Pickering said – calling it a $10 million total investment.
“It’s really a testament that a lot of Lubbock companies came together and built what SIMFLO has today,” Pickering said as he mentioned SitePro, Teinert Construction and ACME Electric.
Recent customers using it even before the ribbon cutting included British Petroleum and companies in El Paso and Charlotte, North Carolina.
SIMFLO recently moved its headquarters to 619 Broadway.
“A thriving downtown is critical to a city, and we’ve been very excited to see a lot of things take place,” Pickering said.
Slideshow: SIMFLO and SitePro joint announcement. Staff photos.
Video: See highlights from the announcement by pushing the play button on the video player. Or click here.
A machine shop in Sundown
“In 1951, Clarence Simmons opened a machine shop in the small West Texas town of Sundown. He provided machining services to the general public and for the booming oil and gas industry,” the SIMFLO website said.
Raymond Pickering, Troy’s grandfather, was hired in 1953.
“He was off the GI Bill from Texas Tech and needed a job and so came here and worked for Mr. Simmons,” Pickering said.
In the 1970s the Pickering family purchased Simmons Pump which then acquired Simflo Pumps in 2018, and the two companies combined under the SIMFLO name.
Pickering graduated from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth and was house hunting in Chicago until he was met with two feet of snow one weekend.
He reached out to his family, moved back to Lubbock and started working for the company in 2012.
He’s since picked up a post-graduate degree from Texas Tech. The company has roughly 150 employees – 100 of them in Lubbock with the others spread out in South Haven, Mississippi and Wilcox, Arizona.
Bateman graduated from Texas Tech, went to work for another company for a while then started SitePro with a friend.
“The core of what we do is processing data from devices and equipment in the field,” Bateman said.
The company has just under than 50 employees, he said, with more than half of them based in Lubbock.
“You drive by some of these buildings and don’t really know what they do. But once you kind of peel the onion back, there’s a lot of business that happens all over the globe right here in Lubbock,” Bateman said.
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