ORT's History

In April, 1958 Ort Tool and Die started out as a small, two-car garage shop by co-founders Bill Ort and John Driscal. Shortly after, Bill Ort at age 65 was seeking retirement. Angelo Milano, a former co-worker of Bill, decided to purchase Bill’s shares of the company to become a 50% owner with John Driscal. A year later, John passed away and left the company solely to Angelo. After a lot of hard work, Angelo started growing the business by hiring employees to work in his small shop while he marketed the business. New equipment was bought such as a couple Bridgeport mills, a conventional lathe, a surface grinder, and a shaper. Ort then became the first company in the area to acquire a numerically controlled (NC) machine.

As far as the name of the company, Angelo decided to keep the Ort name. At the time, all of the company’s envelopes and letter headings had the name “Ort” already stamped. Since it was too expensive to change all the headings, the original name stayed with the company. Soon thereafter, Angelo would continue to display his great work ethic and passion to grow the company to what it is today.

Today, Ort has grown into a large machine shop with four different facilities, including its main 100,000 square ft shop, a 10,000 sq. ft. fabrication facility, a 20,000 sq. ft. small machining facility and a 5,000 sq. ft. secure special assembly facility. Over the past 10 years Ort has averaged $25 million/year in sales revenue. Unlike many other machine shops who are heavily involved in the automotive industry in the greater Detroit and Toledo area, Ort has diversified to serve numerous markets including wind, solar, oil, semi-conductor, paper, plastic, glass, military, and food industries. Over Ort's 50 year history, Ort has built a reputation of manufacturing high quality parts in a timely fashion. This is mainly due to Ort’s high emphasis on employee training and using the best tooling and equipment to get the job done.

Even during the recent economic downfall where manufacturing took a major hit, Ort was able to stand its ground. This was because of Ort’s great reputation and ability to serve numerous markets. Going forward, Ort Tool and Die continues to grow and is always looking at new and better ways to meet its customers’ needs for years to come.