Cullum & Brown Guiding Principles

• Treating others as we want to be treated: with dignity, respect, honesty and integrity. 
   
  
• Providing opportunities for associates to maximize their potential, both personally and professionally. 
   
  
• Adding value to our customers by providing quality products, exceptional service and support for a reasonable rate of return. 
   
  
• Being good corporate citizens and encouraging associates to give back to their communities. 
   
  
• Encouraging associates to take responsible risks and seek opportunities that add value to our customers.

About Us

Across western Missouri and throughout the entire state of Kansas, foundries, flour mills, food plants, automotive and aircraft plants, medical facilities, printing companies and municipal water and waste water operations turn to one distributor for the top names in pumps, vacuum and blower systems, air compressors and related items-Cullum & Brown, Inc.

Some customers know this company as "The Pump People," providing pumps from 0 to 150,000 gpm and 0 to 10,000 psig.

Others think of Cullum & Brown as the best company to put together a total vacuum system package- from electric motors or engines and PTO drives, to gauges, heat exchangers, valves, silencers and filters.

And still more customers call Cullum & Brown "the best compressor guys around ... they carry the top air and gas compressors, know them better than anybody else, and can keep those compressors going."

"It takes time to earn customer confidence," says Ed Brown, president and fourth generation of this 118-year-old company based in North Kansas City. "We have customers who go back with us 20 and 30 years. Some go back even further, up to 50 years."

The company’s roots began in 1886 as a water-well drilling business. The company grew through four generations to be a major ground water developer. They have been a North Kansas City fixture since the 1930s.

In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the company made the transition into distributing and servicing pumps, blowers and compressors. Twenty-seven years ago the company closed the ground water development side of the business.

Today, Cullum & Brown has more than 40 employees based out of the North Kansas City headquarters and warehouse, and full-service centers in Springfield and Wichita. This company is known for its great service team. “Customers rely on our experienced staff of application and sales engineers,” Brown explains. “The inside application and management staff have accumulated 140 years of product experience in a variety of applications.

"Our outside sales staff of 10 also includes a wide industry background. All of our people receive technical and product training on a regular basis," he continues. And crucial to the Cullum & Brown service team are its eleven factory-trained service technicians. The company backs up its service commitment with large stocks of units and replacement parts, plus 24-hour emergency service.

Top brands, the best service, more than a century in business ... this company is anchored to the values that made it successful in the past-placing top value on both its employees and customer relations.

Yet Cullum & Brown is fast- pacing to do business in the new century. A major upgrade in the corporate-wide computer system was completed several years ago. The company assured Y2K compliance back at that time.

Another marker for stepping into business in the new century is ISO certification. "We believe ISO Certification would give us competitive advantage” Ed Brown explains. "Used correctly, ISO 9000 Certification helps you run your business more effectively. As an ISO-certified distributor, we would have defined all our service procedures, bench-marked our quality service, and have in place a system to monitor our performance.

In other words, ISO certification would take Cullum & Brown to the next level of customer service- again, in keeping with business in the new century. But, possibly, there is no ISO certification for one of Cullum & Brown strongest points: Helping clients install and maintain the most effective and energy-efficient pumping, vacuum/blower and compressor systems.

Cullum & Brown is not a design engineering firm. Still, the company's application and sales engineers have decades of experience with industrial, petroleum, municipal and agricultural applications of these systems. There's not much they haven't seen.

Anyone can distribute equipment, but the Cullum & Brown systems expertise makes this company the best for application assistance, custom fabrication, installation, repair part stocking, maintenance, and emergency repair.

"Our larger clients have engineers on staff, and we simply come along side those engineers and assist them in installing and servicing these systems,” Brown explains. “But most of our customers are smaller companies, and we help them match the right equipment to the job."

A typical example of this, Brown says, is the customer who was using compressed air generated by large compressors. "The compressors were operating at less than maximum capacity. We showed this customer that smaller, multiple compressors would better fit their plant demand requirements, which varied from time to time.  After two years experience, the customer was pleased with the flexibility offered by smaller, multiple compressors versus the two large ones. And they saw that their maintenance costs and electrical consumption was down, which improved their plant profitability."

The best way for a potential client to get to know Cullum & Brown is to request an on-site air audit. The Cullum & Brown experts will inspect for adequate pipe size, number of elbows, types of valves, location of equipment, compressor tank configuration, and on and on.

"We are not afraid of walking into a plant with a complicated system," Brown says, referring to the company's decades of field experience. The air audit is a good time for customers to ask about potential energy savings and technology upgrades. "Of course, energy savings is always a major concern," Brown, "but there have been a lot of new technology improvements in just the past few years, including better controllers for the units and systems that provide cleaner and dryer air for operating high-speed equipment."

Cullum & Brown takes a team approach to serving clients. Sales staff are backed up by product specialists and application engineers in each of the three product categories. Application engineers are constantly available by phone to all customers.

Service and repair technicians are tied into the team via pagers and cell phones, for routine maintenance and 24-hour emergency repair work. Technicians are factory trained, and Cullum & Brown's locations are warranty repair centers for all of the brands that the distributor represents.

Parts are inventoried at Kansas City, Springfield and Wichita, and ready for immediate dispatch. Complete units are stationed at all three locations for emergency situations.

Another excellent way potential clients can become familiar with Cullum & Brown is by bringing the company in during plant design or retrofit planning. "We enjoy the opportunity to work on the up front phase. We appreciate being able to make recommendations to the engineering firm on equipment location, adequate pipe size, planned maintenance, overall system efficiency, availability of repair parts, and other concerns critical for planning.

“Some very simple things often get overlooked and we enjoy the opportunity to make recommendations during the planning state so the customer will be satisfied with the equipment years later.”

Of course, when Ed Brown talks about years later, he pictures Cullum & Brown still servicing that client. “We value most the longevity of our customer relations.”