The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

HINDERLITER TOOL COMPANY.

Frank J. Hinderliter established the Hinderliter Tool Company at Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 15, 1919, for the purpose of manufacturing oil-field well-drilling products. Utilizing an 1879 patent on oil-rig elevators taken out by his father, Isaac N. Hinderliter, as well as patents he had developed himself, Frank Hinderliter started a firm that eventually held ninety-eight oil-field equipment patents. His enterprise grew rapidly and soon acquired an enviable reputation for quality products due to the specialized heat-treating process employed in their manufacture.

With the outbreak of World War II the Hinderliter Tool Company received several government contracts to produce gun barrels for the military, which further increased the company's reputation for quality manufacturing. In 1946 the H. K. Porter Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bought the controlling interest in the company. The following year Don R. Hinderliter, Frank Hinderliter's son, formed the Don R. Hinderliter Company. He continued the same product line and concentrated on metal heat treating on a commercial basis while developing a revolutionary method of making sheaves for oil derricks.

In 1962 Richard R. Hughes acquired a controlling interest in the Hinderliter Tool Company, and by 1977 he began adding a number of energy-related companies under the auspices of Hinderliter Management Systems. By 1988, with the downturn in the energy business, that company divested all fifteen of its energy-related businesses, including Hinderliter Tool, and in 1990 moved its headquarters from Tulsa to Dallas, Texas.

Bobby D. Weaver