Gaskets, Orings and Rubber Inc.

photos & story by Sally Finneran

A toy monkey hangs from a bar above

a rubber-cutting machine, periodically an employee walks by and gives it a pull so an odd high-pitched noise emanates from it briefly, cutting into the loud rumble of the presses and the otherwise quiet of an old pizza shop in downtown Plains Montana.

Gaskets, Orings and Rubber Inc., manufactures all kinds of gaskets. It was opened in May 2005 by Randy Wood.  The company markets itself on providing customers friendly old-fashioned service and high-quality products that reach the consumer in a timely manner.

“You never do the same thing every day,” said P.J. LaPointe who works in the shop producing the gaskets.

Employees laugh and make jokes as they work, in a very relaxed atmosphere that seems fitting for a rural Montana town.  They even adopted a stray cat, who climbs all over the tables and often gets in the way of the press used to cut the gaskets.

“It’s kind of a stress reliever having a cat around,” said employee Daniel Tarwick.

While the staff enjoys silly distractions and having fun, they are also serious about what they do and pay a lot of attention to detail. 

The production manager Lee Mercier carefully crafts the “dies” that are pressed through the rubber to create the gaskets.  A whole room in G.O.R is dedicated to the storage of the different dies.  And practically every other room that isn’t full of different production tools stores all the different kinds of rubber. 

When G.O.R started Wood worked in the shop as well as managing the business.  As he has gained more clientele, Wood has been able to hire three employees who actually make the product, and a secretary, so he can focus primarily on management and sales.

Wood said he chose to open his business in Plains because the small town offers the environment that he would prefer to live and raise his family.  As well as being a good place to live, it is also a substantially cheaper place to run a business.  With just a little more planning, particularly with shipping, Wood can still run his business as effectively from Plains as he could from anywhere else in the country.