History of the SSEC.
Around 1928, the John Wood Company of Chicago purchased a number of companies, the:
Western Manuf. Co. (the makers of the ECO air meter)
Bennett Pump Co.
Shotwell Pump Co.
I believe ARO, the mfg. of shop equipment.
And a number of companies that had nothing to do with the service station business, such as water heaters.
Around 1930, Wood decided it had too many reps out there selling products from each of these companies, so it established the SSEC, and put all these companies under the SSEC name.
Bennett and Shotwell were combined, and Bennett who had never made a gas pump was now in the gas pump business. The first pumps were labled Bennett-Shotwell. These were just renamed pumps that Shotwell had developed and were selling under their name. About a year later the Shotwell name was dropped, and the pumps were just labled Bennett. This had nothing to do with Canada.
The depression hit and nobody was selling pumps.
Around 1932, Wood decided to close the Bennett plant in Muskegon, MI and move the pump production to the SSEC water heater plant in Conshohocken, PA. When they started making pumps there they dropped the Bennett name and just used the SSEC name. This is also true of the ECO air meters, my Air Meter book shows two version of the 15 and other meters, one with the ECO embossed on the cover, and others with SSEC embossed.
In 1937, when things started getting better and the country believed it would soon be going to war, the manufacturing of gas pumps and ECO was moved back to Muskegon and the Bennett name was now put on the pumps.
Note your tag, the addresses shown are the Conshohocken address and Chicago, the home office of the John Wood Company.
The John Wood company is still very much in business, I have a copy of the brown brochure shown on this page of their website:
http://www.johnwood.com/history.aspxBe sure to click on the 1920 at the top of the page to see pictures of the Bennett pumps.
All the above was written from memory.
Jack Sim