Tibbals Flooring Co.
The Tibbals Flooring Co. and its successor operations under the Hartco, Armstrong World Industries, and Armstrong Flooring brands comprised the most significant manufacturing enterprise in Oneida for more than seven decades. Founded in 1946 on the site of an earlier hardwood mill, the plant grew from a modest post-war lumber operation into a nationally-recognized producer of parquet and strip hardwood flooring, at its height employing more than 520 workers and generating over $30 million annually in local economic activity. Its eventual closure in 2020 marked the end of the region’s largest industrial employer and a defining chapter in Oneida’s economic history.
Precursor: The Pearson Hardwood Flooring Company
The Pearson Hardwood Flooring Company was established by Emmett Pearson and his son, James Price Pearson Sr., along the Cincinnati-Southern Railway and Pine Creek in Oneida in 1923. It was nestled amongst several other lumber mills that had already been in operation.
The Pearson Mill had opened in 1923, when lumberman Emmett Pearson moved to Oneida from Middle Tennessee. But it was never regarded as especially profitable, and by the mid-1940s the health of both Emmett Pearson and his son, Price Pearson, had begun to fail, leading them to sell the company.
Founding of Tibbals Flooring Co.
Charles Tibbals and his brother Todd, who were in real estate and architecture respectively, purchased the old Pearson Hardwood Flooring Co. in 1946, shortly after the close of World War II. Its first action was to acquire the Pearson Hardwood Flooring Company.
As the post-war housing market soared, so, too, did the Tibbals operation. The company benefited from a nationwide boom in residential construction and an expanding consumer market for quality hardwood flooring.
The Hartco Innovation
The pivotal moment in the company’s history came in the late 1950s, driven by Charles Tibbals’ son Howard, who joined his father in the business and proved to be an inventive and technically gifted manufacturer. In the late 1950s, Tibbals discovered and patented a method for manufacturing parquet flooring using pieces of wood that were initially considered worthless. The new brand of flooring was called The Hardwood Tile Company, or Hartco for short.
The invention transformed what had been a conventional strip flooring mill into a nationally competitive parquet producer. By converting wood scraps and off-cuts — material previously discarded or sold at low value — into an attractive, engineered parquet tile, Charles and Howard Tibbals created both a new product category and a substantial cost advantage. Howard Tibbals later reflected on the technical ingenuity involved: “There’s a lot of good commercial woodworking machines in this country, but if you want to change them to do special products and run real fast and all that sort of stuff, that was my specialty — taking existing machinery and adapting it to do more things than it was originally designed to do.”
Howard C. Tibbals
Howard Charles Tibbals (August 10, 1936 – March 20, 2022) was the long-time owner of the Tibbals Flooring Company in Oneida. Born in Ohio on August 10, 1936, Howard Tibbals was the son of Charles Ernest Tibbals. He grew up in Oneida after his family relocated there following the war, and joined his father in running the flooring business. The original wood flooring plant at the site of the Oneida railroad depot expanded to include operations on nearby Industrial Lane, and was Scott County’s largest industrial employer for decades.
Howard Tibbals was also celebrated outside Scott County for an entirely separate passion: the tiny wooden toys he began building at the age of 12 in 1948 became a major part of his life. Tibbals began creating a circus’s big top in 1956, built his first wagon in 1959, and completed most of his models by 1974. The circus was premiered at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville. The resulting creation — the Howard Bros. Circus Model — eventually found a permanent home at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.
Operations and National Reach
At its peak, the Tibbals/Hartco plant was the economic engine of Oneida. At its peak, the Tibbals operation employed more than 520 people and pumped more than $30 million into the local economy each year. The Hartco brand achieved wide national distribution and was selected for prominent commercial projects. When Donald Trump’s “Trump Tower” was constructed in New York, it was Hartco’s parquet flooring that was chosen for the lobby of the magnificent new structure.
It was said in Scott County that the plant’s output meant there were “pieces of Scott County in homes all over the world.”
Sale to Premark International, 1988
In 1988, Tibbals sold the Hartco brand to Premark International for $94 million. Howard Tibbals subsequently became a significant philanthropist in the Oneida community. His donations, along with donations by B. Ray Thompson, helped make the school system’s new, state-of-the-art campuses a reality in the 1990s. He later moved to Sarasota, Florida, where he continued expanding his circus model and donating to the Ringling Museum; in all, Tibbals donated nearly $11 million for the Tibbals Learning Center. He died on March 20, 2022, at the age of 85.
Triangle Pacific and Armstrong World Industries
Hartco Flooring Company was later purchased by Premark for $94 million in 1988, and then to Triangle Pacific Corp. in 1996. By that time, another of Triangle Pacific’s brands, Bruce Hardwood, had grown to become the largest producer of residential hardwood flooring in North America. By purchasing Hartco, Triangle Pacific was able to acquire one of its largest competitors.
Just two years later, in 1998, Armstrong World Industries — at the time a Fortune 100 company — purchased Triangle Pacific for $890 million. Production at the Oneida plant continued under Armstrong’s ownership, though the company operated it as part of a much larger global flooring portfolio.
In 2015, Armstrong World Industries created a new publicly-traded company, Armstrong Flooring, to separate its hardwood flooring products from its ceiling products. The Oneida operation became part of this new entity.
Decline and Closure
2010 Mass Layoff
The plant’s fortunes turned sharply during the financial crisis of the late 2000s. Amidst an economic recession and a housing market crash, Armstrong announced on Feb. 4, 2010, that it would idle most of its Oneida operations, costing 260 workers their jobs. Two months later, it closed the strip mill, finish line, and yard operations. The effect on the local economy was severe: Scott County’s unemployment rate rose to become the highest in Tennessee, eventually exceeding 23%.
Final Closure, 2020
A skeleton operation continued at the plant for another decade. On Feb. 11, 2020 — 10 years and one week after Armstrong World Industries significantly scaled back operations at the plant — the few dozen workers who remained lost their jobs, as American Industrial Partners (AIP) idled its parquet flooring plant in Oneida. The layoff came suddenly and unexpectedly for the workers at the Oneida facility, many of whom had worked at the flooring plant for decades.
It ceased its strip mill, finish line, and yard operations in 2010 and was used to manufacture floor cleaners by the time it was shuttered by AHF Products in September 2022. It was later owned by the Industrial Development Board of Scott County, and has since been targeted for copper wiring theft and vandalism. Today, it is owned by Brewco and is being developed into an industrial park.
Legacy of the Brand
The Hartco brand is currently owned by AHF Products, the parent company of Bruce and other brands of hardwood flooring, and is headquartered in Mountville, Pennsylvania. The brand survives in the marketplace, though manufacture no longer takes place in Oneida.
Howard Tibbals’ son, Jeff Tibbals, served two terms as Scott County Mayor from 2010–2014 and 2018–2022, and is also a former vice mayor of the Town of Oneida and a former math instructor at Oneida High School.
The flooring plant’s nearly eight-decade run — from the Pearson mill’s founding in 1923 through the final closure in 2022 — represents one of the most enduring chapters in Oneida’s industrial history, outlasting the coal and railroad eras that preceded it and providing stable employment for generations of Scott County families.
Chronology of Ownership
| Years | Owner / Brand |
|---|---|
| 1923–1946 | Pearson Hardwood Flooring Company |
| 1946–1988 | Tibbals Flooring Co. / Hartco (Hardwood Tile Company) |
| 1988–1996 | Premark International |
| 1996–1998 | Triangle Pacific Corporation |
| 1998–2015 | Armstrong World Industries |
| 2015–2019 | Armstrong Flooring (independent spin-off) |
| 2019–2022 | AHF Products / American Industrial Partners |
| 2022–present | Industrial Development Board of Scott County and Brewco |