A Tamaqua business was celebrated for 80 years of serving the community on Wednesday.

Central Spring Service, a fourth-generation family business, specializes in the repair and installation of suspensions for light-duty, medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks.

Owner Edward Tite III explained that his grandfather, who came from Italy with a third or fourth-grade education, rented the company’s original garage located by the car wash and Boyer’s Food Market in 1941. The present facility on West Penn Pike was established in 1958.

“The garage got too small for the size of the trucks that were starting to come around, so he found this property down here and he bought it in the early ’50s,” said Tite. It took a few years to dig it out and build the building, and then he moved in here in 1958 (to the West Penn Pike venue). My dad then came and started working for him in the late ’60s and early ’70s. They stayed the same size and I came in 1984.”

In 2019, Tite, his son, Andrew, and wife Sara, decided to expand the building and double it in size to accommodate more business.

“My grandfather had the guts to start it and my dad built it from there,” Ed said. “It’s hard to wrap my head around how far we’ve came even in five years - from that shop, to this shop. Sometimes I pull into work and I can’t believe it.”

Central Spring Service has many longtime customers, who travel as far as New York and New Jersey.

“We do suspension work. Mostly heavy duty; tractor-trailers, tri-axles and some pickups. We don’t do anything as far as brakes or anything,” Tite said. “It’s a niche market. There aren’t a lot of these what they call “spring shops” around anymore. It’s not something somebody could go to diesel school and say they’re going to do this. It’s a very specialty market that we do. But it’s something that I learned from my grandfather, father and the people in the shop at the time.”

Tite recalled coming to the shop at 10 years old to help out his family.

“I never had another job,” said Tite. “I graduated high school and the next day I was here and never left. I knew it was always what I wanted to do.”

Andrew decided to keep the family legacy rolling and join the business in 2019. Central Spring Service, family-owned and operated, employs an intern, five full-time and one part-time worker.

“When I was little, I was down here quite a bit,” Andrew said. “I never thought this is what I wanted to do at first. I worked at the shop in high school during the summers and I liked it more and more. I worked with my pop (grandfather) for a while, it was the most fun I ever had and it’s been great with my dad, too.”

Ed said there was a learning curve when his father passed in 2015. But his family stuck together and business has been booming.

State Sen. David Argall, R-Schuylkill/Berks; state Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Berks/Carbon/Schuylkill; and Barron “Boots” Hetherington, Schuylkill County Commissioner, were on site to present the Tite family with a “citation” in thanks and appreciation of their integral family-owned business on Wednesday.

There aren’t many 80 year-old businesses in the region, but Central Spring Service is once in a lifetime.

“It’s incredible when any business can survive for decades,” Knowles said. “These folks found a niche and they’ve grown the business and continue to operate. We’re very fortunate to have them.”