Published: August 11, 2007

By KARL KLOOSTER
of the News-Register

There's an oft-related scene from that classic 1967 movie "The Graduate," wherein a middle-aged businessman wants to say just one word to a young, wide-eyed Dustin Hoffman: "Plastics."

It sticks in my memory because plastics have always fascinated me. The encyclopedic array of different products that can be created from these synthetic and semisynthetic polymer compounds is mind-boggling.

If looked at as a whole, they have been responsible for transforming our material world in ways we don't fully appreciate unless we take the time to recount just the most fundamental of them - versatility, durability and economy.

My fascination with plastics came to the fore once again when the opportunity arose to tour the Freelin-Wade manufacturing plant in McMinnville. Here they were being used to create an amazingly diverse range of tubular configurations.

The vast majority of Freelin-Wade products employ two types of plastics - polyvinyl chloride and polyurethane.

In what will probably be a totally inadequate attempt to describe them, as I understand it, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is hard and durable, but can be softened with plasticizers to make it more flexible for use in tubing.

However, it does not have the toughness of polyurethane, which, although more expensive, is as flexible as rubber and can be used in applications where abrasion resistance is important. And no, we won't get into the chemistry behind it.

Let's leave that to Fred Plews, who started Freelin-Wade 27 years ago. He had been a key executive at A-dec in Newberg for 14 years, helping shape the company that eventually became the largest dental equipment manufacturer in America.

When asked what led him to start his own business, Plews tells the story of driving behind a Kaiser Industries dump truck which bore that company's slogan, "Find a need and fill it."

Owing to his long involvement with the dental profession, he came up with a concept for specially designed polyurethane tubing that could vastly improve the performance of certain dental equipment. But to implement the idea, he had to strike out on his own.

Plews and his wife, Linda, founded the fledgling company they called Freelin-Wade in 1980. Fred and Linda combine to form the first name. Wade is an acronym for Woodland Acres Development Enterprise, a former business owned by the couple.

At first, they worked from a small office in Salem where tubing extrusion was jobbed out. Within a year, they were joined by Jack Burns, who became a partner in the business.

The little enterprise grew rapidly from this foundation. Offices were moved to McMinnville where they were initially on First Street. The Plews' garage was converted into their first manufacturing facility.

They began to design other innovative tubing products for industrial applications. By 1986, offices and manufacturing were in a building on 10th Street, with 10 employees on the payroll. Sherl Hill was hired the following year as bookkeeper. She is now the company's vice president and general manager.

In 1988, Freelin-Wade became the second company to locate in the new Riverside Industrial District. Starting out with a 9,800-square-foot building, four subsequent expansions have brought the facility to more than 80,000 square feet.

Linda said that during those developmental years, "I was raising a family and never worked full time." Fred replied, "Yeah, only about 10 hours a day."

"Even though we knew we had something really good, it was tough for a small, unknown company to get distributors to talk to us," Linda said. "When you're nobody, you have to prove yourself.

"We kept after the country's largest pneumatics distributor for five years before the owner finally agreed to take us on. Then it was like dominoes. He went to trade shows and said, if you're not doing business with these people, you're nuts."

By 1990, they had 25 employees and were capitalizing on their industrial pneumatics applications. They had gone out with the confidence that they had the best plastic tubing in the world. When the market finally realized they might be right, things really took off.

Over the span of a single decade, the Plewses and Burns had built a solid reputation, and the company was poised for even greater growth. At that point, Coilhose Pneumatics of East Brunswick, N.J., approached them with a buy-out offer.

The principals already knew one another and the two companies manufactured complementary product lines. A deal was struck. Fred Plews continued with the company for five more years under a management contract. Jack Burns stayed on until 2005.

It's been a very good investment for the buyers," Fred emphasized. "They've really taken advantage of the industrial market, and there's still tremendous untapped potential in the medical market."

Today, the company has a full-time workforce of 125, all at its McMinnville headquarters. It also employs 20 workers from Mid-Valley Rehabilitation. The line of industrial products fills a 38-page catalog. Dental, the original product category, has its own six-page catalog.

"At any one time, we have about 13 million feet of tubing on the floor," Hill said while conducting a tour. "We run three shifts, five days a week. Almost all products are custom order. We don't have minimums. Everything is in-house except raw material."

She spoke with particular pride about the company's "lean" manufacturing process, which has brought about a dramatic reduction of waste both in worker time and use of materials. "We've made huge gains in productivity and space utilization and reduced inventory by about 40 percent."

As for Freelin-Wade's relationship with its parent company, Hill said, "Coilhose has left us pretty much alone. I think they're happy with the way things are going."