Igloo, Made in Katy

The low industrial buildings north of the interstate west of Katy are the headquarters of Igloo, which turns out something like sixteen million coolers a year and has been doing a version of this job since 1947. It began as a small metalworking shop in Houston, and its first product was not a cooler at all. It was a galvanized metal water jug, built for oilfield workers, designed to get drinkable water to men working outdoors through a Texas summer without it turning warm and tasting of the container. Almost every red and white cooler riding in the back of a Texas pickup is a descendant of that jug, and the company has never really left the problem it started on, which is keeping something cold in a place that is trying very hard to warm it up. The business merged with Production Tooling in 1960 and spent a decade under the name Texas Tennessee Industries, which nobody remembers. The first all plastic ice chest arrived in 1962 and changed everything, because plastic could be moulded in volume and insulated far better than sheet metal. By 1971 the company was renaming itself after the product line that had taken it over. Igloo stayed independent for decades before the Swedish outdoor group Dometic bought it in 2021 for 677 million dollars. The plant sits in Waller County, technically outside Katy, and it is one of the few places on this drive where the thing being manufactured is something most passing cars already own.