Adrian Steel Company was founded in 1953 in Adrian, Michigan by Robert B. Westfall, a former All-American Michigan fullback and Detroit Lions All-Pro. Starting as a small structural-steel warehouse, the company pivoted to sheet-metal fabrication in the late 1950s and, with the rise of the light-duty cargo van in the 1960s, became one of the pioneers of the modern van-upfit industry. Today Adrian Steel has upfitted over one million vans and is one of the largest van/truck equipment manufacturers in North America.
For HVAC contractors, Adrian Steel's HVAC & Mechanical trade packages are a default spec line item on new service-van orders at Ford, RAM, Mercedes, and GM dealers. Packages include modular steel shelving, parts bins, bulkhead partitions, drawer units, interior floor systems, and ladder racks engineered specifically for the mix of tools, refrigerant tanks, vacuum pumps, and stock parts a residential or light-commercial HVAC tech carries daily. Configurations are tuned for each chassis - Transit, Sprinter, ProMaster, Express/Savana, NV - so techs get maximum usable volume without compromising headroom or bulkhead access.
Adrian Steel is sold through a network of 350+ authorized distributors and upfitters across the US and Canada, plus direct relationships with many Ford, Ram, and Mercedes commercial dealers that let fleet buyers order upfits bundled with new-vehicle purchases. The company is also ship-thru approved with several OEMs, meaning the upfit can be completed at the factory or a nearby upfitter before the van is delivered to the contractor, compressing the delivery-to-work timeline that kills HVAC fleet productivity.