Entrepreneur and philanthropist
Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters
2023
Bio:
As a boy, Ford B. Cauffiel Sr. read books about the lives of the self-educated automobile engineers like Walter Chrysler and Henry Ford who left their family homes as young teens to work in machine shops and learn the transportation industry from the ground up.
Inspired by those future titans of industry, Cauffiel and his older brother designed, built and sold a machine they called the Cauffiel Engine. He was 14. He enrolled in University of Detroit’s College of Engineering in 1948 and, a year later, sold the engineering rights of the Cauffiel Engine to the Clinton Machine Corporation, which became the largest small engine company in the United States.
Though he did not finish his degree at University of Detroit, it did not slow him down. He got a job as a production engineer at Ford Motor Company, but left because he did not have enough of a feeling of accomplishment in such a large place. He later sold large machinery before founding Cauffiel Machine Company as an engineering company and opening a Studebaker-Pontiac dealership.
Over the years, working from a home base in Toledo, he created innovative processing systems that revolutionized the steel, textile, automotive, construction, agricultural and canning industries, earning patents for a number of them while increasing exports and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Still a car guy at heart, he collected classic automobiles build by the Duesenberg brothers, Henry Ford and others he had read about as a boy and, in 1985, built a museum to house his collection that includes Pierce Arrows, Stutz Bearcats, Packards, Thunderbirds, Cadillacs and more.
Understanding the importance of education, Cauffiel founded Students for Other Students (SOS), a non-profit that pays students to tutor other students. More than 20,000 students in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and New York took part in the program. He later helped start an Executive Masters of Business Administration program at the University of Toledo.
And he was still inventing, creating the EZ-Table to replace TV-tables to be used with recliners and more parts for international combustion and diesel engines. He founded Lithium Innovations Co., LLC to make battery material and other lithium products and developed plastic processes for producing recycles plastic materials from carpet and automotive plastics. He build steel processing systems and plants all over the world including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Israel, Mexico, Ecuador, New Zealand, Korea, China, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.
His list of honors is as lengthy as his accomplishments and include a Presidential E Award from the U.S. government for Outstanding Contribution to Export Expansion; Master Entrepreneur of the Year sponsored by Ernst & Young, Merrill Lynch and Inc. Magazine; The Horace Mann Award from the American Humanist Association in recognition of philanthropic work funding student tutors in public schools; and the Jefferson Award’s Certificate of Excellence for Outstanding Community Service.
It is for his outstanding work as an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and innovator and an inspiration, that we give Ford B. Cauffiel Sr. this honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. Commencement, University of Detroit Mercy, May 13, 2023.