Doug Rodgerson, a highly valued member of the McDonald Water Storage team, is retiring this week after a career spanning 48 years which has seen him travel the world.
After leaving Berwick Grammar School at sixteen, he took up a Marine Engineering apprenticeship with a Glaswegian company, Denholm Ship Management, in 1972. After two years training at South Shields Marine and Technical college he joined his first ship in Dagenham and was soon crossing the North Atlantic carrying Volkswagen Beetle cars to America.
In 1984 after various trips to places around the world, he had the opportunity to go to Newcastle University to study Mechanical Engineering, which led to a Masters Degree in Mechanical and Production Engineering. Part of the course was a project which involved going to Elsy and Gibbons to look at quality issues and create a computer programme to calculate the dimensions and capacity of the Elson Hot Water tanks.
Doug’s time with Elsy and Gibbons resulted in an offer of a job as a production engineer. After several years of project work and changes in company ownership, he started to become involved with local authorities and consultants to generate new work. This resulted in becoming the local Sales Manager for the North East and West of England and with further company changes incorporating Scotland.
Following the Elson closure in 2011, he joined McDonald Engineers, as we were called back then. The first task was to acquire the relevant machinery to begin manufacture of the ELSOflow and CUBEflow range of hot water tanks. Within three months we were producing and able to provide Elson customers with an on-going solution.
The following years saw him develop a fantastic relationship with customers, not only providing essential information on the Elson replacement products, which are still in demand today, but also the full range of domestic and commercial hot water solutions.
We would like to take this opportunity to wish him a long and happy retirement, and success in his new retirement project, working on his Land Rover Defender.
