Roto-Rooter

Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Drain Service is a United States company which originally specialized in clearing tree roots and other obstructions from sewer lines. Today it employs thousands of plumbers, water restoration and sewer and drain service technicians throughout the U.S. and Canada, and offers home services using its patented, proprietary Roto-Rooter machine.

History

In the late 1920s, Samuel Oscar Blanc (1883–1964) was motivated by a stubborn clogged drain in his son's (Milton L. Blanc) Des Moines, Iowa apartment to seek a better solution.

By 1933, Samuel Blanc had fashioned a sewer-cleaning machine from a washing machine motor, wheels from a child's little red wagon and a 3/8" steel cable. The cable rotated sharp blades to cut tree roots out of sewer lines, eliminating the tedious and expensive need to dig up pipes and clear obstructions by hand. Blanc's wife, Lettie (née Lettie Jensen), called his invention, a heavy-duty plumber's snake, the "Roto-Rooter."

By the mid-1930s, Blanc was selling his patented "Roto-Rooter" machines for $250 and incorporated a business around it called Roto-Rooter Corporation. Many who were eager for work in the midst of the Great Depression started their own Roto-Rooter businesses throughout the upper Midwest, the Great Plains and the Northeast. Sewer cleaners are not required to have a plumbing license so in the 1930s a man could earn a decent living with only minor training operating the Roto-Rooter machine and a willingness to advertise his local business. Roto-Rooter's sewer cleaning service allowed homeowners to avoid digging up lawns and landscaping to reach underground sewer pipes. This modern breakthrough was such a revolutionary concept in the 1930s and 40s that Roto-Rooter featured an illustration of a mound of dirt over a recently excavated sewer pipe with the caption, "Why put a grave in your yard?"