Our history since 1936.

Pronounced “hey industrial,” HAE Industrial honors our roots in Hydro-Air Engineering and reflects the approachable, responsive service customers have come to expect from our team. The name gives us a clearer identity for the future, but the story behind the company still starts where it always has: with John Pye, Ben Barker, and a practical solution to a real industrial problem.

John Pye and Ben Barker weren’t trying to make history when they started our company back in 1936. They were just trying to slit some conveyor belts.

At the time, the Georgia Tech grads worked for Goodyear in Akron, Ohio. Both engineers wanted more than just company roles, and they were ready to jump on opportunity when it knocked.

That knock came in the mid-1930s, when Mr. Pye invented a conveyor belt slitter that could take up to a ten-ton roll of belt, slit it to customer specifications (up to a mile long, if necessary) and then vulcanize the ends. He built the slitter and then convinced his friend Ben to come back to Atlanta and help him set up shop.

Mr. Barker did just that, and next thing they knew, they were pitching their plan to their old employers: send us the belts and let us get them to your customers after cutting and slitting them to size ourselves.

Goodyear liked the pitch. They liked it a lot, in fact. It saved them a lot of hassle, and pretty soon, Pye-Barker was more than two guys with an idea. It was an industrial supply company with headquarters in west downtown Atlanta and an exclusive line of Goodyear’s belts.

They supplied belts to clients like Georgia Power, Georgia Marble, U.S. Steel in Birmingham, the coal and aggregate industries, and others across the region. Mr. Pye was president, Mr. Barker led sales, and together they grew the business.

Business boomed thanks to the founders’ vision. They quickly added suppliers such as 3M, Rust-Oleum paints, Falk & Rexnord Reducers, Foster Quick Disconnect Fittings, Versa Valves, Allenair Cylinders, and many others.

Many of those early vendors are still around today, and that’s no coincidence. Our company has always prided itself on doing business with like-minded suppliers, and we pick partners who we feel will be around as long as we are.

By the end of their first decade in business, Mr. Pye and Mr. Barker were at the helm of one of the largest industrial suppliers in the state of Georgia, selling “rope, soap, and dope” to companies making a difference in the state. Back then, there were no computers, no email, no fax machines. Customers received dense catalogs or came to the office to place orders and pick up parts at the counter.

In 1951, they moved to a new warehouse at the corner of Pryor and Garnett in Atlanta. It’s all gone now. The city of Atlanta tore it down and built a MARTA station. At the time, it had been the site of the original Ford dealership in the city.

At about the same time, they sold their fire extinguisher division to Tom Lumsden, who named it, of all things, Pye-Barker Fire & Safety. Two distinct, separate companies that would take two distinct, separate paths.

That shared history is part of the reason we are HAE Industrial today. Over time, the Pye-Barker name created confusion between two separate companies. Our new name gives us a distinct identity we can own, protect, and build for the future while carrying forward the reputation and relationships built under the Pye-Barker name.

A few years later, Mr. Pye passed the reins over to the next generation, and another Georgia Tech engineer named W.H. “Hub” Lindsey, who joined the company after the Korean war, became company president. With I.A. “Ike” Scott as his sales manager, Hub grew the company in a direction he knew would be profitable: larger-ticket, engineered items.

“Rope, Soap, and Dope” (otherwise known as ‘mill supplies’) were becoming less profitable, but that was all right. Hub founded the Hydro-Air Engineering division in 1968, with a vision of providing customers with a comprehensive line of pump and compressor equipment and services. Pye-Barker would sell, maintain, and repair this equipment in our in-house shop or, if necessary, right there in the field.

That Hydro-Air Engineering name now lives on in HAE Industrial. It connects our next chapter to the part of our history that shaped who we are today: a company built around engineered products, practical service, and long-term support for the equipment that keeps industrial processes moving.

At that time, Viking Pump had a warehouse and shop in the Atlanta area, but was looking to start selling through distribution and was hunting distributors, and that was all Hub needed. Hub’s Hydro-Air Engineering Division enticed Viking to sign up Pye-Barker Supply Company as their distributor for Georgia. In addition to the distribution rights, Pye-Barker Supply Company picked up Viking’s shop foreman, Leroy Childers, and purchased some of Viking’s shop equipment to support the new line.

To head up the Hydro-Air Engineering Division, Hub moved Ed McDonald and Tom Langston into those roles. Less than a year later, they hired another young Georgia Tech engineer, John Lunsford, who happened to be a new father. Travers Nelson was hired at the same time to head up the division and brought his pump expertise to bear, growing the group. In 1970, another young Georgia Tech grad, Bill Spencer, was hired to fill out the team.

It didn’t take long for the group to expand its offerings. Worthington Compressors & centrifugal pumps, Roots Blowers, and Deming Pumps were all added to the engineered product line. John and Bill did the outside sales engineering, and Ed backed them up inside. Leroy was a magician in the shop, and the team grew quickly.

So good were they that in 1972, a Wall Street Investment firm named Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette approached with visions of creating a chain of distributors like WW Grainger and McMaster-Carr. Suddenly, New Yorkers in three-piece suits were making frequent visits and lingering around the desks. It was during this time, in 1974, that Pye-Barker Supply Company moved to its current location in Forest Park, Ga.

Overall, the group purchased 6 companies from Virginia to Florida and marketed them as “Industrial Distributors of America,” but all the companies kept their original brands and, in many instances, kept their original management teams in place. Unfortunately, their idea never achieved the economies of scale they hoped for, and in the early 80’s, they began selling the companies off.

At that time, Hub Lindsey was still president of Pye-Barker Supply Company, and as DLJ began selling, John Lunsford saw an opportunity. Going in with Hub and Bill Spencer, the three men purchased all the Georgia locations of Pye-Barker Supply Company in 1981. This included Forest Park, Savannah, and Albany.

And so a new chapter began for the company.

It didn’t take long for John Lunsford to decide to try and make another change and in 1983 John bought out Bill and Hub to become the sole owner of the company. Hub settled into a stress-free retirement and Bill became a sales legend at Pye-Barker.

Bill was instrumental in growing the compressor side of the business and would be the first salesman to do over $2M in sales in one year AND would have the honor of the largest single Viking Pump sale: 100 pumps sold to Georgia Pacific around 2007.

It was also around that time that Pye-Barker Supply Company made a major change. John Lunsford recognized that 99% of sales and 100% of profits came from engineered products rather than the original mill supply products. The decision was made to exit the mill supplies and focus solely on engineered products. The same Pumps, Compressors, and Blowers that we focus on today.

Gardner Denver became the compressor of choice in 1987 when they absorbed Joy Compressor (which had signed up Pye-Barker Supply Company after Worthington went under in the late 1970’s). In the early 90’s, Pye-Barker Supply Company would also switch out Roots Blowers for the Gardner Denver Blower lines.

Since that decision to move to only engineered products, Pye-Barker Supply Company has added lines such as FMC Piston Pumps, Crane Deming & Weinman Pumps, Finish Thompson Pumps, Zeks, Beko, Nano, Travaini, Elmo-Reitschle, Q-Pumps, and others to support our customers.

It was 1992 when a young Georgia Southern University graduate would return to the company that had employed him during some of his high school and college years. Eric Lunsford joined the company as a gopher. Go for this and go for that. But it wasn’t long before he was manning the phones, providing support for Viking pump customers.

Eric was computer savvy and helped maintain the company’s decade-old XL system from Prophet21. He would later do some part-time outside sales as well as fill in doing purchasing for inventory, helping with collections by visiting the customers, helping with shipping and receiving, troubleshooting pumps in the field, and in 2014 was made Vice President of Sales. It was a given that he would stay out of the shop; his reputation there while in high school was less than stellar.

Eric would become President of Pye-Barker Supply Company at the end of 2016, and one of his first decisions was to enhance the company's name. Eric recognized that the company had long moved past its “supply company” roots. With engineering capabilities, solutions-oriented sales, and a full team of field service technicians, it made sense to properly convey to our customers how we can help them. And so it was that Pye-Barker Supply Company became Pye-Barker Engineered Solutions.

Sadly, in 2018, John Lunsford, CEO of Pye-Barker Supply Co., Inc., passed away after 40 years at the company. Eric Lunsford then took over as President, CEO, and owner of the company.

When Eric took the company reins, he had a mind to grow the company outside the state lines. So when the opportunity came in 2019 to acquire the Gardner Denver distributor in Orlando, he jumped at it. The acquisition of Florida Air Technologies was completed at the end of November 2019, and a new chapter in the Pye-Barker story began as we started serving customers in Orlando and throughout Florida.

This new energy also fed into the acquisition of an in-state competitor just 4 months later. Right as the COVID pandemic hit, Pye-Barker acquired Coastal Air Compressor from Larry Rivers, strengthening our service capabilities and adding an office strategically located between Augusta and Savannah to better serve our customers on the east coast of Georgia.