Allen ‘Al’ Maloney, with one of the large electric motors they rebuild at his business, Ron’s Electric Motor Repair.

Like father, like son, the old saying goes. And sometimes it is quite true.

Allen “Al” Maloney owns and runs Ron’s Electric Motor Repair in Blue Earth. It is a business his father, Ron Maloney, started here years ago. Hence the name.

Now, Al Maloney also owns another business his father once owned years ago, and had sold off.

This one is called KARAM Phase Converters. And, both the name of the company, and its eventual transition from father to son, is a bit of an interesting story.

“Dad bought the phase converter company back in the early 1980s,” Al Maloney relates. “It was Windiger Brothers Phase Converters back then, owned by some brothers in Waseca.”

Those brothers had a machine shop in Waseca and concentrated more on the shop than on the phase converter business.

“Dad was friends with them and asked them if they wanted to sell the phase converter business,” Maloney says. “They said yes, and so Dad bought it and started making phase converters here in Blue Earth.”

The senior Maloney also renamed the business KARAM Phase Converters, and not something like Ron’s Converters, or Maloney Phase Converters.

“He considered it a family-owned business,” Al Maloney explains. “So the K stands for Karen, my sister, the first A is for Arlen, my brother, the R is for my dad, Ron, the next A is for me, Allen, and the M is for Margie, my mother.”

Al Maloney says his father, Ron, made and sold a lot of phase converters. Basically that is a unit that attaches to large electric motors and enables a three-phase electric motor to operate on single phase electricity. Farmers (and others) running three-phase motors often only have access to single-phase electricity, especially in rural areas.

Eventually, in 1996, Ron Maloney sold KARAM to a guy in Fairmont, Al Maloney relates. Two years later, in 1998, Ron died.

“The guy in Fairmont eventually sold the phase converter business to a guy in Spooner, Wisconsin,” Al Maloney says. “That guy eventually moved to Dubuque, Iowa.”

A little over a year ago, Al Maloney needed a phase converter and contacted the guy in Dubuque.

“He told me he wasn’t running the business any longer because he had taken a job as a manager in a factory,” Al says. “I asked him if the business might be for sale, and he said yes. So I decided to buy it.”

Just like his father had 26 years earlier.

So on May 14, a little over a year ago, Maloney and four others drove to Dubuque and packed up all the equipment, parts and inventory and brought KARAM Phase Converters back home to Blue Earth.

And, business has been good ever since. Maloney says they are selling the phase converters all over the U.S. They just shipped some to New Jersey and Florida, for instance and were getting ready to ship one to remote rural Turton, South Dakota and another to Iowa for an irrigation system last week.

“We are also UL (Underwriters Laboratory) rated in Canada, so we ship some there, too,” Maloney says.

The phase converter business fits in with Ron’s Electric Motor Repair, which basically takes large electric motors and rewinds the wiring, repairs the armature and makes the old motor new again. They work on a lot of large electric motors, like those used on grain dryers on farms.

But, as Al Maloney’s four employees all are quick to point out, they work on any and all electric motors, large and small.

Ron’s Electric Motor Repair has been around a long time. It was started by Ron Maloney in 1965 in Madelia. He also started shops in Slayton, Le Sueur and Blue Earth. Al Maloney moved to Blue Earth in 1977 to work in the shop here, which was first located just north of where they are now. They moved to the current building in 1979.

“Dad was a farmer, but he really liked electricity and just started doing electric motor repair,” Al Maloney says. “He started the business, because farmers had a real need for keeping their electric motors going. And they still do.”