Brettrager's initial start in tooling began long before he was even born due to his family. "I guess it was just in our blood. I am the youngest child of eight in my family. My oldest brother started in the business and we all learned the occupation and branched off and went our own ways. It's almost like a gene in our family," he says. This occupation, coupled with his love of flying and an unexpected bathroom break were the foundations for Jetool's beginning.
The business is a family affair at Jetool. His wife and four of his five children work for Jetool directly, or the Chesaning Manufacturing Company, which Jetool is a division of. "My wife has her office about 70 feet from my office," he adds.
Brettrager feels that a smaller family type business is what a lot of companies enjoy working with. This business atmosphere also enables Jetool employees to give customers individual attention if needed.
The small village of Chesaning, Michigan, featuring a hometown airport with a sod runway, has been home to Jetool for over 20 years. We are remotely located from the big airports and metropolitan areas. My town has about 1,800 people and we have one traffic light. I always say if they put in another traffic light in the town it would be getting too big for me," he says. He continues, "On one of my cross-country flights, I was flying back to Saginaw (MI) and I had to go to the bathroom. I landed at the Chesaning Airport. I found that there was no longer a bathroom there because the hangar had been blown over because of a strong wind storm," he said. "I ended up going across the street to the building and noticed a foreclosure sign on the door and I said 'Hey, this is nice.'"
After petitioning the circuit court, the property became Brettrager's and he started Chesaning Manufacturing in 1963 with just a couple of people. He began the business by doing shop work and machine tool building. Specialty machines were developed and used for the formation of box springs for the furniture and automotive businesses as well as machines that were used to form the head restraints for automobiles.
Within the next decade, Brettrager found himself in the early developing stages of the EDM (Electrical Discharge Machine) business and established Bretco, Inc.. These machines were a revolutionary new idea using computer-controlled devices that can drill holes smaller in diameter than human hair to jet engine parts up to nine feet in diameter. The EDM had worldwide sales, some of which were used by Rolls Royce for the RB211 jet engines, General Electric, the U.S.S.R. Caman River Truck Plant project and the Space Program. He later sold Bretco to a Swiss company and then began to dabble in ground support equipment.
He bought Jetool from its founder, Russell Purchase, the chief pilot for Dow Chemical, in the early 80s. Purchase was already established in the area of jets, however; he needed help in making specific tools to maintain that type of aircraft. Brettrager filled that need and word spread to Honeywell (at that time Garrett General Aviation Service Co.) who signed Jetool as an authorized vendor in 1987.
Over the years, Jetool has been recognized by companies such as General Electric and Honeywell for both quality products and service. "We take care of about 100 service centers throughout the world that we provide tools and test equipment for. I take pride in our pricing, our quality and our on-time delivery", Brettrager claims. "These are responsibilities that Jetool has to its customers. If we can't compete in those areas, we are in trouble." These ingredients have helped Jetool successfully form lasting partnerships with several companies on a global scale. "That is why we have been in business so long and it just keeps getting bigger and better all the time" adds Brettrager.
Although Brettrager focuses much of his time on the company, he prefers to
spend it fulfilling his love of aviation by flying his corporate plane (a
Cessna 180) or his WWII Vultee BT-13 (which he completely restored). Because
of his avid interest in aviation, "I got to know a lot of great people
in this business. It is not always what you know, but also who you know"
he says.
