Thomas Edison debuted his famous incandescent light bulb in 1879, ushering in the artificial light era. A scant few decades later William Grote picked up Edison’s idea and ran with it; so when the Roaring 20s rolled around with a newly ascendant automobile industry, Grote was more than ready. The firm that carried the family name was founded even earlier, but it was in the 1920s that Grote took its lighting (they might say “visibility”) innovation to next levels.
Thus, as the Manufacturing Express rolled into Madison, Indiana for a week-ending Friday celebration complete with catered Kentucky Fried Chicken for 400 workers, the tour visited an American manufacturing icon: One of the nation’s few remaining family-owned, family-operated companies with well more than a century of experience.
Julie Webster, a 27-year employee as of the previous Sunday, stopped by the Express and explained that working at Grote has even changed how she travels the Interstate highway system. She checks the lighting on vehicles, especially commercial trucks, and often finds Grote products at work. She also notes that her boyfriend of a half-decade also works at Grote, as does his daughter and it’s not unusual to find extended families working at the company, which seems fitting since it’s operated by an extended ownership family.
Webster also says one of the things she likes about working at Grote, other than making the highways safer, is that she can always reach somebody named Grote if she really needs to. The access and company communication, Webster feels, is one reason people tend to work there for years and advance into virtually new careers.
The innovation record includes not only lighting, but manufacturing process. It was actually the family’s second generation, William’s son Walter F. Grote, that illustrated just how much research was in the company DNA. Grote introduced injection-mold plastic products into the marketplace in 1922, and by 1929 Grote had developed America’s first automatic plastic-injection molding machine, along with the world’s first retro-reflective reflector.
Those LED-forward lights you started seeing on American roads a while back? Grote introduced those in 2004.
And they have not really let up. In 2023, for example, Grote debuted a paradigm shift in semi-trailer safety technology with the first wired rear-view trailer camera. Using what it calls the J560 7-Way Connector, the product allows big-rig drivers to have the sort of video display we might associate with a modern family sedan. It’s done by real-time video displayed in the truck’s cab.
Julie Webster laughs when asked if she thought, 27 years ago, that she was coming to Grote for such a long haul. She also adds that she doesn’t regret a minute of it.
