Many Pye-Barker customers have worked with us for decades. A review of company records found 166 customers from 1984 who were still doing business with us when that review was conducted. Those relationships reflect a long-standing focus on practical engineering, dependable service and doing business the old-school way.
Our Story
John Pye and Ben Barker founded the company in 1936 with a straightforward idea: cut industrial conveyor belts to the size each customer needed. Both were Georgia Tech graduates working for Goodyear in Akron, Ohio. Pye developed a slitter capable of handling a ten-ton belt roll and cutting lengths of up to a mile. He persuaded Barker to return to Atlanta, where they proposed a local cutting and delivery operation to Goodyear. Goodyear agreed, and Pye-Barker Supply Company began serving industrial customers from west downtown Atlanta.
The Pye-Barker Supply Company truck fleet during the company’s early years. Digitally enhanced from an archival photograph.
Pye-Barker grew beyond its first belt line. The company supplied Georgia Power, Georgia Marble, U.S. Steel in Birmingham, and coal and aggregate businesses across the region. Pye led the company while Barker managed sales. They added lines including 3M, Rust-Oleum, Falk and Rexnord, building a broader industrial supply business around the needs of their customers.
By 1951, growth led to a larger warehouse at Pryor and Garnett Streets in Atlanta. The building had previously housed the city’s first Ford dealership; the site was later replaced by a MARTA station. The move marked how far the business had come from its first conveyor-belt operation.
Ben Barker, photographed in 1952. Digitally enhanced from an archival photograph.
A few years later, Georgia Tech engineer W. H. “Hub” Lindsey became president, working with sales manager I. A. “Ike” Scott. As industrial needs changed, Lindsey steered the company toward larger engineered equipment. He established the Hydro-Air Engineering division to help customers select, maintain and repair pumps and compressors, both in the shop and in the field.
John Lunsford, Ed McDonald, Bill Spencer, Leroy Childers and others expanded that work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pye-Barker moved to Forest Park in 1974 and continues to operate there. The equipment and applications have changed since 1936, but the founders’ emphasis on engineering judgment, hard work and customer service still shapes how the company supports industrial facilities today.