70 Years of Cleaning Industry Memories

Current Spartan Chemical Company president Steve Swigart mops up the jan/san world in 1971.

Spartan Chemical Company Founder, E. T. Swigart, Jr., cuts the cake at the company’s 25th anniversary celebration in 1981.

Betco Corp. Founders Carl and Ann Betz exhibiting products at a 1972 trade show.

Betco Corp.’s Bol-Maid Porcelain Cleaner was used for cleaning restrooms in the ’60s and ’70s.

The Nilodor team shows their products at a trade show at the Sahara Motor Hotel in Cleveland in the 1950s

The Hillyard basketball team, The Shine-Alls, won two Amateur Athletic Union national championships in the 1920s. The company has a permanent exhibit in the Basketball Hall of Fame for their contributions to the sport.

Founder Newton Scott “N.S.” Hillyard with the first company wagon and deliveryman, Richard Martin, circa 1907, when the company was known as the Hillyard Disinfectant Co.

Two vintage Hoover vacuums: The 1930 Hoover Duster Model 200 and the 1909 Senior (upright).

Before Multi-Clean was known for chemicals, it manufactured equipment. Here are its floor machine and vacuum assembly lines from 1951.

The Carroll Co. was founded in 1921. This picture shows the company in 1951.

Harry Apple (center), the founder of Sanitary Maintenance, celebrates his 90th birthday with son and SM Publisher Bob and daughter-in-law Patricia in 1972.

An early ProTeam Quarter Vac.

Industry veteran and former SM Columnist Phillip Consolino pictured in 1983 when he was president of his family distributorship, Aalen Aides.