Dave Noll, Print-O-Stat
Dave Noll was 17 years old in 1976 when a neighbor recommended that he apply for a job at Print-O-Stat in York, Pennsylvania. “I was walking down the street one day and he asked me if I found a job yet, and I said no. He says, ‘Stop in, fill an application out.' The rest is history."
That history – 47 years of it – is about to come to end. Noll is retiring June 30. He started as a delivery driver, then worked in the warehouse, and spent about a decade in sales before becoming warehouse manager. Since 2002 he has been purchasing manager, which he says has been his favorite job at Print-O-Stat.
Naturally, an awful lot has changed in the nearly half century since Noll started there.
“Back then we had rows and rows of Mayline tables in the warehouses, and drafting stools, drafting machines, all kinds of scales, templates, technical pens…thousands of SKUs,” he remembers. “We used to buy electric erasers by the cases. And we sold a lot of Cole Steel furniture back then, too. That was manufactured here in York.”
The printing was different then, too. “You had your photostats back in those days, we made a lot of negatives. People around here were doing circuit boards and they needed precision negatives so they could get the boards working.”
Diazo equipment dominated back in the 1970s, and releasing pressure on the ammonia canisters is something Noll remembers well.
“In the early days you had 100 and 150 pound cylinders of anhydrous ammonia. Once they got above 70 degrees or so, the stuff started cooking,” he says.
These days Noll is teaching his replacement, Beth Lentz, how to manage the company’s purchasing. With 11 locations, that’s a big job. But Lentz is up to the task – she’s been the purchasing admin for the past 22 years.
What are Noll’s plans when Print-O-Stat is in his rearview mirror? “Whatever I want,” he says with a laugh. “I got some work to get done around the house and I want to do some traveling. Just take it easy.”
Congratulations, Dave!