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Up for discussion. I am, by no means a "Pump Expert" per say, but lately i have bought, restored and currently restoring some Service Station Equipment pumps....no NOT Bennett's but SSE as per tag on the pump. In fact no where is the word Bennett mentioned on the pump. But they don't exist as SSE's in Jack's book and all repro parts at various vendors are also listed under Bennett and not SSE. Here is the tag off of a USA made SSE 76.

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Now here is a restored and unrestored Canadain version of a Service Station Equipment pump. It is a model 176 and also has no relation to a Bennett. The faces are porcelain and it has slightly more chrome accents to it. So why are these pumps catagorized as Bennetts cause (imo) they are NOT Bennetts but their own pump company that is not recognized as such.

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Looks great, I like the canadian version better. I have found the same problem, and also with the Rheem-Bennett-Service Station Equiptment.


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As Far as I know it is the same co. If you look for Bennet in the gas pump blue book it is under SSE not Bennett. I have a Bennett 76 ID tag and two SSE 76 ID tags.


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Can you post pic's of your tags Matt...thx
what is the blue book???


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The gas pump blue book list serial numbers and years, so you could look up how old you pump is.

I will take a picture of the Bennett 76 tag. The SSE tags are still on pumps and can not get a good picture because my pumps are too close together.


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I believe SSE pumps are not in "The Book" because only U.S. pumps were included in it. SSE is the Canadian branch of the company?

Jim

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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.aspx
Be 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


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Air Meter ID book also available
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All I'm saying Jack is at the end of the day if you have 20,000 or 100,000 pumps out there, (just numbers as i don't know the exact figure) that have an SSE tag on them, they deserve some kind of recognition, even if only for the newby that spends a month looking for SSE parts cause thats whats on the tag....mm


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minuteman,

If that newbe had done some research (like buying a book that identifies over 1900 gas pumps and gives a history of over 125 companies that made gas pumps) instead of just going out looking for parts, he might have found out that it was still the Bennett Pump Co. that made the pump, they were just in another location.

Jack


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Gentlemen, I'm on this sight today because of a SSEC pump. I received a email from a person I had never met who said he had a pump he had never heard of before. He said people had told him it looked like a Bennett. He had been in the hobby years before but had got out of it. This was the only pump he had left. It had a SSEC tag on it and would I be interested in it. I went out and looked at it and bought it. It was only a couple of miles from my house. I had been a lurker on this site so I remembered there was a place on this site that told you the histories of pump companies. Thank you Jack. There it was SSEC and Bennett the whole shebang. I proceeded to buy Bennett parts to restore it until I found out about Ron Scobie. There again on this site. Thank you Ron. So that is why I'm hooked and on here every night. Thank you everybody. Here is the before and after shots of that pump. Mitch

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I was wrong about the Blue book. Bennett is under John Wood Co. Here are two of my 76 tags.





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