History Highlights

From its manufacturing headquarters in Cranston, Rhode Island, and a fabrication facility in Fall River, Massachusetts, Taco Comfort Solutions develops and manufactures products and systems for both residential and commercial applications. These include circulators/pumps, valves and controls, air-dirt separators, heat exchangers, buffer and expansion tanks, domestic hot water recirculation and accessory products, and sophisticated building management controls.

The Taco Family of Companies includes Taco Comfort Solutions, Taconova, Hydroflo Pumps, Taco Italia, and Precision Investment Foundry Asia, and operates sales and manufacturing locations in the United States, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, and Vietnam.

However, the company’s humble beginnings were started by Elwood White in 1920. The former salesman for a boiler company set up shop as the Thermal Appliance Co.

From its first product, a firepot generator that heated water over a coal fire, the company went on to develop the tankless water heater and a tempering valve that mixed hot and cold water.

Elwood died during a trip to secure a military contract during WWII. At that point, only military contractors could obtain metal to build products. After his passing, his son, John Hazen White Sr. took over and won a contract to build gun mounts for machine guns aboard aircraft as well as heat exchangers for ships.

In 1945, Taco Heaters, as it was then known, earned an Army-Navy “E” Award for reducing the cost the government had been paying for such components by almost 50 percent. (Flash forward to 2016 and the company received the President’s “E” Award, this time for excellence in exporting under the award’s current stewardship by the U.S. Department of Commerce.)

After the war, John Sr. returned Taco to the domestic heating industry. He traveled to Europe to secure the rights to what became known as the “wet rotor circulator,” a revolutionary product development that transformed Taco’s fortunes in the years ahead.

John Hazen White Jr. succeeded his father. Under his leadership, Taco has grown dramatically. John Jr. has carried his father’s vision forward, building innovative and dependable heating, cooling, and plumbing solutions.

Taco is well known for investing in in employee education and professional development training for plumbers, contractors and engineers.  A community-minded company, Taco Comfort Solutions operates a charitable foundation, The Taco/White Family Foundation, which assists local non-profit organizations dedicated to missions involving the arts/music, education, healthcare, community and the environment.