BILLINGS, Mont. — Finn Origer was getting out of hamburgers. After supplying ingredients to Hardee’s restaurants for decades, he was ready for a new venture, though not a particular kind.

In Origer’s years in business he learned stable demand was more important than personal passion. A business plan had to be water-tight with a steady flow.

Radiators fit that description exactly, specifically Montana Radiator Works Inc., which turned a 100 years old this spring.

And with the Bakken oilfields busy with trucking, his Billings business was close enough to capitalize.

“It was just a very simple business. Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm The employees have been here a long time,” said Origer, company president. “They have 130 years of combined experience.”

The business, has been has been around since 1915. Advertisements suggest it might have been known as the Olander Manufacturing Co. for its first five years, but eventually became Montana Welding and Radiator, capable of “doing all kinds of welding and cutting.” It’s had at least five owners and three different addresses, mostly in downtown Billings.

But as the business matured, the welding was sidelined so the company could focus on what it did best, fix radiators. Every car with a liquid-cooled combustible engine has had a radiator for a century. And those radiators have been located in the front of cars and trucks, where the mechanized wind can pass through fine metal louvers and help cool engine-hot fluid as it courses through the radiator.

That forward positioning of the radiator also meant it was one of the more damage-prone mechanical parts a car has. The front end of the car smacks another object. The radiator gets shoved into the whirling fan blade. Suddenly, Montana Radiator Works is in your future.

The business’s new shop is 16,000 square feet with a three-bay garage and a south-side delivery door with well-worked hinges. There are radiators in the parts warehouse bigger than a 70-inch, flat-screen television and fans larger than a circular dining room table for four.

Origer has radiators in stock for small vehicles, but Montana Radiator Works’ best customers are trucking companies and, more recently, hydraulic fracturing crews in the Bakken oilfield. The Bakken has given the corporation enough business to warrant sending a parts truck to Williston, ND, several times a week. The journey is 629 miles roundtrip.

Long-distance business trips like those to the Bakken make sense because there’s not a lot of competition for the radiator service and repair. Montana Radiator Works’ closest competitors are in Denver and Minneapolis. The business serves parts of North Dakota and South Dakota, as well as Wyoming.

The company also carries the signal lighting that tends to be smashed up in front-end collisions.

The core of the company’s business is still radiator repair. Origer has a veteran group of workers who know how to solder a radiator back into shape. That kind of soldering is a lost art, Origer said. It’s necessary to train someone on the job when a new repairman is needed because no one teaches soldering anymore.

“One hundred years is an exciting milestone for us,” Origer said. “Radiators have been an important part of cars since they were invented. We’re proud to carry on the Montana Radiator Works tradition.”

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