Bruening, Joseph M.

Joseph M. Bruening was a salesman who understood that service was the key to business success. His company, Bearings Inc., manufactured nothing. Instead, it distributed antifriction bearings and power-transmission components. It built its success on a vast inventory of bearings and commitment to service.

In 1973, for example, Bruening got a call from an Armco Steel Co. executive desperately searching for a special 1-ton, $60,000 bearing. Bruening found the bearing in the company's St. Louis sales office and arranged to have it delivered to Armco within four hours, saving the steel company $1 million in downtime.

"We have always offered 24-hour emergency service," Bruening once said. "Some of our specialists average three and four night calls a week. And our customers really appreciate it when one of our men helps to get a million-dollar production line going again."

Bruening's commitment to service helped his company's annual sales reach $200 million by 1977. When he retired in 1983, his company was the largest bearings distributor in the world, with 170 sales and service centers.

Even before he became involved in the bearings industry, the Cincinnati native had learned the importance of serving industrial companies. After dropping out of the University of Cincinnati, Bruening took a job as a customer-service troubleshooter for an axle maker.

By 1922, Bruening managed Detroit Bearing Co. He came to Cleveland to save the company's struggling branch office, which specialized in replacement bearings for cars and trucks. He had 90 days to show a profit or the company would close the operation.

Bruening arrived and checked into the YMCA a day early, then went down the hall to shower. When he returned to his room, he discovered that his clothes and money had been taken. Wrapped only in a towel, he borrowed money for a long-distance phone call and asked his boss in Detroit to wire him enough money to replace his wardrobe. Bruening was in the office the next day.

While he worked hard to restore the local office to financial health in his first months in Cleveland, his employer was struggling financially. Bruening accrued $2,000 in back pay while the company covered its other debts.

In 1923, Bruening learned that Detroit Bearings was selling off its branches. He could own the Cleveland office if he would consider his back pay a down payment on the purchase. Bruening agreed to the deal, changed the company's name to Ohio Ball Bearing Co. and went back to work. In two years, Bruening owned the Carnegie Avenue business outright.

As the years passed, the company shifted its focus from auto and truck products to the broader market of bearings for industrial products. In 1927, it began to branch out by opening an office in Youngstown. Offices in Akron, Cincinnati and Columbus soon followed, and by 1952, three subsidiaries — Indiana Bearings, Pennsylvania Bearings and West Virginia Bearings — were operating outside Ohio.

Bruening, who renamed his company Bearing Specialists Inc., bought similar firms operating in other areas, including Dixie Bearings in the South and a small Pennsylvania firm called Bearings Inc. The parent company took the latter firm's name in 1953.

In 1965, with more than 70 sales offices in 21 states, the company went public to finance more growth.

The firm changed its name to Applied Industrial Technologies Inc. this year and moved into its new headquarters on Euclid Avenue in the Midtown Corridor. It now distributes 900,000 different original-equipment and replacement products to 125,000 customers. In addition to bearings, it sells electrical- and mechanical-drive systems, fluid power products, industrial rubber products and other maintenance and specialty items to businesses in metals, pulp and paper, food, lumber, mining and other industries. It achieves $1 billion in sales annually.

Bruening and wife Eva died within a month of each other in 1987. The Eva L. and Joseph M. Bruening Foundation has disbursed sizable grants to organizations such as the Cleveland chapter of the American Red Cross, St. Vincent Charity Hospital and Health Center and the Cleveland Sight Center.