As CEO of Bullard, an international leader in design and manufacturer of safety equipment, Wells Bullard represents the fifth generation of the Bullard family leading the business.
The company traces its roots to 1898, when Bullard’s great-great-grandfather began selling equipment to gold and copper miners in California and Nevada. In 1919, her great-grandfather, Edward Wheatley Bullard, invented the first industrial hard hat.
This year marks Bullard’s 50th anniversary in Kentucky. Today Bullard has manufacturing operations in Cynthiana, where it produces a variety of safety equipment for first responders, utility workers, health care workers and other applications. It also operates a research, development and marketing center in Lexington, as well as subsidiaries in Germany and Singapore to support its global business.
The hard hat is considered essential equipment around the world. Can you tell us more about its development?
My great-grandfather served in the Army during World War I. Having grown up in his father’s business serving miners, he recognized that the hazards in the war trenches were like those miners faced in the mines. He had been wearing one of those metal doughboy helmets, like you see in WWI movies.
Meanwhile, miners were wearing canvas baseball caps. Those caps would provide some protection from falling debris, but they had no impact protection. When he came home from the war — being an inventor with a passion for worker safety — he came up with a process he called ‘hard boiling,’ which resulted in the hard-boiled hat. That first industrial hard hat was made of layers of tough canvas that were glued together, shaped with a steaming process and given a leather brim and a simple suspension. It was painted with shellac and black paint.
The first site that required workers to wear hard hats was the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1932. The lead engineer was Joseph Strauss, and he wanted the bridge construction to be as safe as possible. Bridge projects at that point were quite hazardous with many deaths. The Golden Gate Bridge is also where my great-grandfather invented our first supplied-air respirator.
Workers needed to sandblast a protective coating off of the steel before it could be painted. The story goes that Joseph Strauss and my great-grandfather noticed that workers were breathing in particles and sand coming off of the steel. My great-grandfather created our first supplied-air respirator by attaching a canopy of canvas over a hard hat to create a hood, cutting a hole in the fabric and installing a glass window for the user to see. He then directed clean, compressed air inside the canvas hood for breathing.
We still make hard hats and respirators, as well as fire helmets and thermal imaging cameras.
The pandemic must have created a demand for your respirators.
Yes. In the early 2000s, we came up with battery-powered air-purifying respirators, typically worn on the waist or in backpack form. Air is drawn through a filter and goes through a breathing tube into a loose-fitting head cover. They are very good for mobile work that requires respiratory protection, like pharmaceutical manufacturing, research labs and nuclear clean-up sites. We had some limited health care business, but during the pandemic, demand for our air-purifying respirators increased by 300 percent.
Not only did our team change the way we did our work to ensure that we kept each other as safe as possible, but we also boosted our development efforts. In about 12 months, we developed a powered air-purifying respirator specially designed for health care workers. We also mobilized 90 percent of our production to focus on respiratory and face shields, hired new employees and developed partnerships with other manufacturers to expedite the supply of raw materials and further increase production.
I’m sure a lot of your products have evolved.
Many of our products’ advances have come through material science, which continues to evolve. We are very strong in injection molding. We mold many things with different plastics, nylons and other resins.
And we observe our customers — listening and learning from them so that we can better protect them. We saw that firefighters had lights mounted on the side of the helmet, for example. That made the balance of the helmet lopsided. It also presented
a snag hazard. Firefighters are sometimes crawling through small spaces to get to victims. We invented our TrakLite, mounted on the helmet’s brim, so light shines precisely where the firefighter needs to be looking, and there’s no snag hazard. And in the rear of the helmet, there’s a buddy indicator light, so a firefighter can see where their partner is. We also introduced a retractable visor that accommodates eyewear. Again, that was based directly on feedback from firefighters.
We also just launched a lightweight traditional helmet — we took out nearly 10 ounces. It’s now one of the lightest weight helmets on the market without sacrificing impact protection.
Bullard also makes products that use thermal imaging.
The military declassified low-wave infrared thermal imaging technology in 1996. One of our customers, a volunteer firefighter in Richmond, Texas, who wore a Bullard helmet, worked at Texas Instruments, where they had been making that technology. He thought it could be used to see through smoke and asked, ‘couldn’t this go to firefighters?’ Several companies launched thermal imaging cameras to the fire service around the same time, in 1998. We became a market leader because we focused on making the camera durable. We’ve designed it with ergonomics, making it easier to use and, over time, smaller and lighter.
And this is your 50th anniversary at your Kentucky location?
Yes, we’re now celebrating 50 years in Cynthiana! OSHA [The Occupational Safety and Health Administration] came into law in December 1970. Our demand went pretty high, because workplaces that hadn’t required safety equipment suddenly did. We went on a tour to find a manufacturing location that was more central to our customers and we heard about a building in Cynthiana. We met with economic development leaders of Cynthiana, one of whom was Tracy Farmer. Tracy helped us secure a financial package to buy the building and equipment and start up quickly.
Our celebration is about the community that has enabled us to grow and strengthen our business over five de-cades. We’ve got generations of families who’ve worked at Bullard — smart and hardworking people who are incredibly dedicated, committed and passionate. We are so grateful to Central Kentucky, Cynthiana and Harrison County. We’re lucky to be here!