about
R&S Maintenance
Why R&S
The only thing more important than our reputation is yours.
You deserve handcrafted solutions made in the U.S.A., transparent business practices, respect, and exceptional service. You deserve the trustworthiness we’ve built over decades, the expertise we’ve grown through perseverance, and the family values we developed in the thick of hard work.
So if:
…then consider us the drop-off point for the burdens on your shoulders.
Give us your dirty work. The hard jobs. The obscure asks. The complex specifications. The one-in-a-million, shot-in-the-dark, SOS requests.
Our full-service approach — a 50,000 square foot state-of-the-art machine shop with every conceivable tool for top-of-the-line custom machining and fabrication, paired with facilities maintenance services — is history in the making. Yours.
Let’s make it great together.
Our History
Our work is state-of-the-art, but we’re old-fashioned people.
R&S Maintenance is family owned and operated. Honest to a fault. Built on quality and dependability. And we’ve never been interested in the flashy or flimsy. Our first logo was made from vinyl lettering from a local discount store. Besides that, we only had a truck, our hands, and a dream.
Jim Surritt is laid off from his machinist job at Goodyear. He starts Meriden Machine Shop out of his garage with his wife Carol Surritt.
We’re fans of humble beginnings. Ours was messy and brilliant and beautiful. It’s also a giant signpost for the reputation we’ve build, part by part, job by job, and client by client.
As the shop grows, Jim and Carol purchase the building just off K4 Highway at the south end of Meriden, Kansas.
We don’t take our success or our story for granted. They’re constant reminders of our capabilities and our humanity. Paired together, those are the foundation of our identity. We don’t just build parts; we build partnerships.
Operations begin in the new building.
Excellence has led to exponential growth over and over for us. There’s perhaps a single downside. If we keep producing parts that last a lifetime, we may just run out of clients.
It’s a risk we’re willing to take.
Jim & Carol’s son, Andy Surritt, begins business, R&S Salvage, with partner Dwayne Ross. They almost immediately transition into the millwright services field by doing slight modifications, removing machinery, and installing new machines at one of their first customer’s site.
We got started with simple jobs like hauling scrap, carting off and selling recycling from facility breakrooms, and installing safety rails for elderly. No ask was too small or beneath us.
R&S Salvage expands into R&S Maintenance, operating out of North Topeka not far off Highway 75.
We’re based smack-dab in middle America — family-owned farms and ranches and people cut from true grit. In the beginning, our clients were all face to face and a quick trot away. They were the people we saw later at the grocery store, the pharmacy, or the high school football game. People who shook our hands and shared their lives with us. We built trust in the raw and saw the difference we made, close up.
Jim Surritt passes away.
Carol continues operating Meriden Machine Shop with their daughters, Linda Smith and Kelly Kampsen, and son-in-law, John Kampsen.
R&S Maintenance buys out Meriden Machine Shop and moves operations to Meriden. Carol begins her well-earned retirement. R&S Maintenance now operates as a dual machine shop and millwright service for new and old customers.
Once we saw the power we had to make strong things stronger and good things better, we wanted more people to gain from our skill and passion. Before we knew it, companies with worldwide reach had taken notice and were asking for us by name.
