Drain cleaning machines built in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania since 1930
✅ Made in USA
Where General Pipe Cleaners equipment is made
McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania
The plant on Thompson Avenue, just north of Pittsburgh, has been the company’s home since 1968. Machines, cables and accessories are built there.
Flexicore® cable
Spring wire wound tightly around a braided aircraft cable core — the patent that made the company and is still wound in-house.
Four generations
The Silverman family has run the business since 1930, which is a large part of why production never moved.
General Pipe Cleaners describes itself as a manufacturer of American-made drain cleaning equipment, built at its own McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania facility. As with any equipment maker, individual bought-in components such as motors and fasteners may be globally sourced; assembly and cable manufacturing are done in Pennsylvania.
The story
Abe Silverman opened General Wire Spring Co. on the first floor of a downtown Pittsburgh building in 1930 — the worst possible year to start a manufacturing business. He made metal springs. Looking for customers, he began making drain cleaning cables for local plumbers on the side.
The side business became the business. In the 1940s Silverman patented a way of wrapping spring wire tightly around a braided wire core, producing a cable with far more strength, flexibility and kink resistance than anything else available. He called it Flexicore. Nearly eighty years later it is still the heart of the product line.
Demand outgrew downtown Pittsburgh and in 1968 the company moved to its current McKees Rocks facility. The division name — General Pipe Cleaners — is the one plumbers know, though the legal entity is still General Wire Spring Co.
The company marked ninety years in 2020 and ninety-five in 2025, still owned and run by Silverman descendants, and still making the Mini-Rooter, Speedrooter, Super-Vee, Handylectric, Mini-Jet and the rest of the line in Pennsylvania.
Why they matter
Professional drain cleaning equipment is a trade-tool category, which means it lives or dies on whether it holds up. A sewer machine gets dragged down basement stairs, run in standing water, and asked to push a hundred feet of cable through tree roots. Plumbers replace the ones that fail and keep buying the ones that do not.
That has been General’s competitive position for decades: they are not the cheapest, and the argument for them is that a machine bought in 1995 is often still working. Building in Pennsylvania is part of how they defend it — the cable winding, the welding and the assembly are all under one roof, close enough for the people who designed the machine to walk out and look at it.
It is also a reminder that “American manufacturing” is not only consumer goods. A lot of what still gets built here is equipment sold to tradespeople who never see a national ad campaign, bought on reputation passed between contractors. Ninety-five years and four generations is what that looks like when it works.
Featured products
Browse General Pipe Cleaners drain cleaning tools available now in the Buy American store.
Frequently asked questions
Is General Pipe Cleaners equipment made in the USA?
Yes. The company manufactures its drain cleaning machines and Flexicore cable at its facility in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and describes its products as American-made.
What is the difference between General Pipe Cleaners and General Wire Spring Co.?
They are the same company. General Wire Spring Co. is the corporate entity founded in 1930; General Pipe Cleaners is the division name under which the drain cleaning products are sold.
What is Flexicore cable?
It is General’s patented cable design: spring wire wound tightly around a braided aircraft-grade wire core. It resists kinking and can be pulled back out of a line rather than snapping, which is the main failure mode of cheaper cable.
Is the company still family-owned?
Yes. It is in its fourth generation of ownership by the founding Silverman family.
