Ford Cauffiel

1930 - 2025

News story
By Mike Sigov
Blade Staff Writer

Ford Cauffiel, a celebrated Toledo inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, died Aug. 16 in Hospice of Northwest Ohio Ebeid Hospice Center, Sylvania. He was 94.

He died of pulmonary infection, his wife of 49 years, Phyllis Cauffiel, said.

"He really was a rare person," said U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo). "He was a very, very generous, creative talent. And he was a breakthrough thinker. He was truly someone who was imbued with the American spirit, and he was fascinated with invention.

"Interested in automotive manufacturing and automobiles and everything that had to do with propulsion, he wasn't the kind of guy to go buy it off the shelf. He was a make-it-here guy."

Mr. Cauffiel never retired, remaining president and owner of American Steel Products until the day he died.

One of multiple businesses he had established, owned, and operated, the Toledo company has manufactured and remanufactured metal processing equipment since its inception in 1953.

Although facing an illness, he remained at the helm of American Steel Products when he sold his flagship Cauffiel Technologies Corp. and stepped aside as its CEO in 2012, after nearly six decades.

"He was a very determined man," Mrs. Cauffiel said. "He had a strong will, and he worked. He worked like a dog. He got up at 5 in the morning. And he would go to bed at 10 or 11 at night, and he was always creating, and he loved to invent."

Cauffiel Technologies had grown out of a small business he started out of his garage as a young engineer in 1953, a few years after dropping out of college to work for a used machinery dealership in Detroit. Originally the Cauffiel Machinery Co., it morphed into a leading producer of metal production equipment, shipping its machinery around the globe.

"I started with a drawing board and a T-square when I was 23 years old, knocking on doors looking for engineering projects," he told The Blade in 2003.

Over the years, Mr. Cauffiel, who held 27 patents, also dabbled in other interests and companies.

He owned steel-processing businesses, as well as Lithium Innovations, a Toledo company that developed energy-saving window coatings and processed the metal for pharmaceutical use. He's had failed ventures too - being a Pontiac dealer and holding an interest in a lead mine were two of them.

But it was Cauffiel Technologies Corp. that provided the steady income and served as the backbone for all his enterprises.

Getting out was a little difficult, he told The Blade at the time.

"It's where it started," he said. "It's like having a baby and pretty soon it grows.

"I'm not a very religious guy," he continued. "But my form of immortality is to think this will go on with this name long after my demise. To me that means something."

Cauffiel Technologies in 1974 received the Presidential "E" Award for outstanding achievement in expanding exports of the steel production equipment it produced.

"We have shipped machinery for producing everything from precision bearings for gasoline and diesel engines to converting steel coils into plate to make large gas and oil pipelines," a then-73-year-old Mr. Cauffiel told The Blade.

In 1975, Mr. Cauffiel, at the time president and board chairman of Cauffiel Machinery, was named Ohio Small Businessman of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration. He was picked northwest Ohio's master entrepreneur of the year in 1994

In 1993, he authored Master Entrepreneur: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Unforgiving World of Entrepreneurship, which was published by MetalWorking Company Publishing LLC.

In the introduction to the book, Mr. Cauffiel wrote that he hoped "it helps the educational system understand how important it is to ensure that struggling students do not feel shunned."

"They need to feel invited and welcome into an environment of love, leadership, and learning," he wrote. "Kids need to know they can be successful despite the odds stacked against them."

Believing that illiteracy is not incurable, he donated generously over the years to children's educational causes in the area.

"He thought that the only way we could cure all our problems was to get young kids educated to read, write, and do math and that's what he wanted to do to make sure kids can read or write, because you never get out of poverty if you can't read write or do math," Mrs. Cauffiel said.

In 1989, he founded the SOS program, a 501(c)(3) corporation that funds peer tutoring programs across the country. SOS raises money from foundations, corporations, and individuals for the promotion, operation, and funding of peer tutoring programs in school districts to pay students to tutor other students who need extra help.

"He realized that if you can't read, you cannot get through life," Ms. Kaptur said. "And so he helped adolescent students how to coach younger children, because we lose so many children who don't learn how to read by the third grade."

Born on Oct. 20, 1930, in Toledo to Elda and Joseph Cauffiel, he showed interest in machinery his early teens and even invented a two-cycle motor in partnership with his two older brothers before starting high school.

He grew up in an entrepreneurial family: His father and grandfather had started local companies. In the early 1950s, Ford Cauffiel had been a production engineer for Ford Motor Co. and a sales engineer for a machine-tool distributor in Detroit.

In 1948, he graduated Libbey High School and then attended University of Detroit Mercy for two years before becoming an entrepreneur. Detroit Mercy later awarded him an honorary doctorate.

"Ford went to college and didn't do well, because, he said, he knew more than the engineers, the teachers, and then he went out on his own," Mrs. Cauffiel said.

It was his four years of mechanical drawing and four years of math at Libbey High School that prepared him for his engineering career, he wrote in a letter to The Blade in March.

"I went on to the University of Detroit but never graduated," he wrote. "Our state and federal governments and universities need to get a better measurement of success other than letter grades."

In his free time, Mr. Cauffiel enjoyed playing golf and tennis, birdwatching, and traveling the world, especially to the African plains.

His memberships included Stone Oak Country Club and Reynolds Corners Rotary Club, of which he was a past president.

Along with his wife of 49 years, Phyllis Cauffiel, surviving are his son, Ford "Tobey" Cauffiel; daughter, Sheree Englehardt; four grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Visitation will begin at 9:30 a.m. Monday at First Unitarian Church of Toledo, where a memorial service will immediately follow at 10:30 a.m.

Arrangements are by Thomas I. Wisniewski Funeral Home.

The family suggests tributes to TutorSmart Toledo.