Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Water Cleanup (formerly called Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Drain Service) is a Cincinnati, Ohio based company providing plumbing repair, sewer and drain services, and water damage cleanup services to residential and commercial customers. Roto-Rooter is a United States company founded in 1935, which originally specialized in clearing tree roots and other obstructions from sewer lines.
, it employs thousands of plumbers, and service technicians throughout the US and Canada who provide plumbing and sewer and water damage cleanup services. Roto-Rooter also employs manufacturing technicians and assembly workers at its manufacturing plant in West Des Moines, Iowa. The plant manufactures the company's patented, proprietary Roto-Rooter sewer and drain cleaning machines as well as sewer and drain cleaning cables and blades. Roto-Rooter is one of the two subsidiary divisions of the publicly traded Chemed Corporation, of which the other one is a hospice care provider VITAS Healthcare.
History
In the late 1920s, Samuel Oscar Blanc (1883–1964) was motivated by a stubbornly blocked sewer at his son's (Milton L. Blanc) Des Moines, Iowa, apartment to seek a better solution than digging up the sewer line to remove tree roots that had invaded the underground sewer pipe.
By 1933, Samuel Blanc had fashioned a sewer-cleaning machine from a washing machine motor, wheels from a child's little red wagon, and a 3/8" steel cable. The cable rotated with a sharp C-shaped blade attached to the tip. This rotating motion cut tree roots out of sewer lines, eliminating the tedious and expensive need to dig up pipes and clear obstructions by hand, thus inventing the world's first heavy-duty Plumber's Snake. Blanc's wife, Lettie (née Lettie Jensen), called his invention the "Roto-Rooter".
By the mid-1930s, Blanc was selling his patented "Roto-Rooter" machines for $250 and incorporated a business around it called Roto-Rooter Corporation. Many who were eager for work in the midst of the Great Depression started their own Roto-Rooter businesses throughout the upper Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Northeast. Sewer cleaners are not required to have a plumbing license so in the 1930s a man could earn a decent living with only minor training operating the Roto-Rooter machine and a willingness to advertise his local business. Roto-Rooter's sewer cleaning service allowed homeowners to avoid digging up lawns and landscaping to reach underground sewer pipes. This modern breakthrough was such a revolutionary concept in the 1930s and 40s that Roto-Rooter featured an illustration of a mound of dirt over a recently excavated sewer pipe with the caption, "Why put a grave in your yard?"
In 1939, after his Roto-Rooter sewer cleaning machine proved successful, Sam Blanc designed and built a smaller model that operated on the same principle but could clean and clear bathroom and kitchen sink drains as well as laundry drains and other household plumbing drains. Blanc also built a much larger version of the Roto-Rooter machine called the Roto-Rooter Royal. It had to be towed by a truck and featured a 10-horsepower gasoline engine and 1000 feet of steel cable. It was capable of cleaning large industrial and municipal sewer pipes. An improved version called "The Mainliner" was introduced in 1958 that could also thread telephone cable. It was discontinued in 1973.
In 1980, the Blanc family sold Roto-Rooter Corporation to Cincinnati-based Chemed Corporation. Chemed began purchasing independent Roto-Rooter franchises and operating them as company-owned service locations under the newly formed Roto-Rooter Services Company, whose corporate headquarters is in downtown Cincinnati. Chemed sold off some of its holdings in Roto-Rooter in both 1984 and 1985, bringing its ownership stake to just below 60%, but launched a bid in 1996 to reacquire the 42% of shares that it had earlier sold off.
In the 1980s, some Roto-Rooter franchises and company-owned locations began to offer around-the-clock service and general full-service plumbing repair for both residential and commercial customers. Today, Roto-Rooter's 24-hour plumbing services represent a major part of the company's business. The company has more than 600 service locations operating throughout North America that serve more than 90% of the US population in all fifty states, and more than 40% of the Canadian population. Roto-Rooter is the largest provider of plumbing repair and sewer and drain cleaning services in both countries.