By Jay Thompson

Stanley Elevator was built around the concepts of reliability, integrity, expertise and personal service. The story of the company’s founding bears this out.

Back in 1951, St. Anslems College in Manchester, N.H., was looking for an elevator for their administration building—but they couldn’t afford a new one. A contractor who knew about their situation put them in touch with Irving Stanley.

Stanley, who had worked for an elevator company since the 1920s, knew exactly what to do. He made few calls and found a perfectly good used elevator for a fraction of the cost of a new one. Then, using a public stenographer (because that was all he could afford), he drew up a contract to purchase and install the used elevator for $7,500. Once the elevator was in place and in operation, the St. Anslems staff was thrilled.

According to Richard Stanley, Irving Stanley’s son and current president of Stanley Elevator, “They thought it was a Godsend, especially this one elderly priest who taught chemistry on the top floor. He couldn’t carry the extra-large glass bottles they used back then for experiments up the stairs any more.”

After he was finished with the job, Irving Stanley discovered that he had overestimated how much it would cost him to install the elevator. He had made a $4,500 profit. When the elder Stanley tried to give the money back, the school’s financial officer asked him what he would of done if it had cost him $8,000 to install the elevator?

“Nothing,” Stanley answered. “I would have installed it anyway.”

The financial officer replied, “Well, you know you did such a good job, why don’t you keep the money? After all, we did have a contract.”

Although Irving Stanley passed away in 1984, that commitment to honesty and excellent service has helped Stanley Elevator grow from a small family business into one of the largest elevator companies in New England. Today, it has over 130 employees, a 24,000-square foot headquarters and warehouse building in Merrimack, N.H., and satellite offices in Portland, Maine, and Mansfield, Mass.

We try to do things the way they were done years ago. We visit our customers constantly and try to catch things before they become a problem.

Stanley Elevator does not manufacture the elevators they sell. In a relationship that goes back to 1954 (and survived several different rounds of consolidation in the elevator manufacturing business), they represent Thyssen-Krupp Elevator, a division of the German company ThyssenKrupp AG.

“ThyssenKrupp manufactures the elevators down at their plants in Tennessee and Mississippi, and they ship them to us,” says Richard Stanley. “We bring them out and install them at the customer’s site.”

Stanley Elevator does business all over Southern Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. They offer both cable elevators (where the elevator car is moved up and down by steel cables wrapping around a drum at the top of the shaft) for taller buildings and hydraulic elevators (which uses the same technology as an automobile lift in a garage) for buildings in the three- to four-story range. They also retrofit existing elevators to meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines and install fire service kits which allow firefighters to take control of an elevator during an emergency.

Rather than selling directly to the building owners, Stanley Elevator prefers to work though contractors. “The contractor establishes what the customer needs and then we install it for them,” Stanley says. One of the contractors that Stanley Elevator has had a long-term relationship with is Trumbull-Nelson.

“We have been doing business with Trumbull-Nelson for almost 40 years,” says Richard Stanley. “We started back before Interstate 89 was finished. It used to end in Concord, so we had to get off there and truck everything up Route 4 to Hanover.”

While installing new elevators makes up about 60 percent of their business, service contracts make up most of the rest. “The last thing a customer wants to do is have a cup of coffee and a sandwich while they are waiting for the elevator,” he says. “We try to do things the way they were done years ago. We visit our customers constantly and try to catch things before they become a problem. We also don’t go out and bleed the contract. We want to maintain our customer base.”

It’s the company mission to provide good products and good services. “Having been around as long as we have, I’d say our mission is to do a good job, and have the customer happy when we have met their requirements,” Stanley says. “And hopefully walk away with a couple of nickels in our pocket.”