College of Engineering News |
| Jack Kulp is standing in front of one of his new products – The “Scorpion” Trailer Attenuator. Jack Kulp not only supports College of Engineering (CoE), but has hired several Cal Poly Pomona graduates at TDI. Shown above are: (L-R): Felipe Almanza (’03 ME), Kevin Gasperini (’08 ME) and Jeremy Smith (’09 ME). |
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| TrafFix Devices manufactures and distributes a wide line of highway safety products for the traffic control and transportation industry. |
Jack Kulp,
'63 Mechanical Engineering Alumnus
Some 22 years ago Jack Kulp and his wife Sue, co-founded TrafFix Devices Inc., now headquartered in a beautiful new two-story office/warehouse in San Clemente, California. TrafFix Devices manufactures and distributes a wide line of highway safety products for the traffic control and transportation industry. See: www.traffixdevices.com
In l987, Jack lost his job when multi-billion dollar conglomerate Lear-Siegler Inc. sold off their traffic signal division, which he had managed for 13 years. So out of necessity, Jack and Sue started TrafFix Devices Inc. (TDI) that same year out of their home in San Juan Capistrano, with only a handful of products. Jack had the experience, the contacts and also some product design ideas of his own to launch his own business – something he always wanted to do. Jack claims, “It was pretty nice sitting around in my PJs in the morning and selling truckloads of orders around the country”.
Since then, Jack and Sue have grown TDI into a company that does some $20 million in annual sales, has about 225 employees worldwide, and owns other plants in Adelanto, CA, Fairfield, Iowa and Tijuana, Mexico. It has become one of the nation’s largest “one-stop shops” for traffic signage, stands, barricades, cones, channelizer drums, and innovative crash attenuators for road safety and traffic control purposes.
While TrafFix Devices utilizes some foreign components from China, Korea and Taiwan to keep competitive, Jack prides himself in stating that most of his products are still manufactured and built in America. At his new facility in San Clemente, several assembly lines can be seen in operation putting together a variety of traffic signs, crash barriers and attenuators - as seen in this photo. Every TrafFix product reportedly meets the Federal Highway National Cooperative Highway Research Project standard, or NCHRP350.
Jack’s wife Sue still works several days a week at the new TrafFix Devices offices on Avenida La Pata, and Jack’s son Brent is TDI’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing, responsible for international sales, which includes Australia, Canada, China, New Zealand, Sweden, Europe and the Middle East.
Jack Kulp has been a long-time supporter of Cal Poly Pomona and serves on the University Endowment Trust (UET) Committee. Sharing the prosperity of a good year for TrafFix Devices, Jack and Sue donated $10,000 to the College of Engineering’s Mechanical Engineering (ME) Department in December of 2009.
January 2010
