McMaster-Carr Supply Company

Is McMaster-Carr publicly traded?
No. It is a privately held company and shows no indication of going public.

Who owns McMaster-Carr?
Founding families and private shareholders. The company does not disclose its ownership structure.

When was McMaster-Carr founded?
In 1901 in Chicago by T.J. McMaster and F.H. Carr.

How big is McMaster-Carr?
An estimated $1.3 to $1.5 billion in annual revenue, roughly 5,000 employees, and more than 700,000 products.

Where does McMaster-Carr ship from?
Five distribution centers in Elmhurst (IL), Robbinsville (NJ), Santa Fe Springs (CA), Douglasville (GA), and Aurora (OH), covering most US addresses next-day.

Why don't engineers just use Amazon?
McMaster's parametric search, specification data, and CAD models let engineers find exact components faster than marketplace browsing, and its assortment depth in industrial parts remains unmatched.

T.J. McMaster and F.H. Carr founded the company in Chicago in 1901, at the peak of America's first industrial boom. It began as a hardware and mechanical supply house serving machine shops, building its early identity on stocking the obscure: odd thread sizes, specialty alloys, and components no general supplier carried.

The print catalog became its institutional anchor. Through the mid-20th century, the thick McMaster-Carr catalog sat in virtually every American maintenance department, functioning as both ordering document and engineering reference. The company expanded methodically, opening warehouses in New Jersey, California, Georgia, and Ohio to extend ground coverage, and moved its headquarters to Elmhurst, Illinois.

The decisive era came in the 1990s, when McMaster committed early and deeply to e-commerce. It digitized the full catalog, added parametric search, specification filters, and eventually CAD downloads for millions of parts, a technical achievement competitors spent a decade chasing. The result was a rare case of the oldest player in an industry defining its digital standard.

Since then the company has compounded quietly: no acquisitions, no outside capital, steady assortment growth past 700,000 SKUs, and estimated revenue climbing toward $1.5 billion. It remains among the largest and most private family-held distributors in the country, with a workforce of about 5,000 concentrated at Elmhurst and its five distribution sites.

The company publishes no sustainability report, emissions targets, or ESG framework, consistent with its overall secrecy. Product-level environmental attributes appear in the catalog where relevant. There is no verified third-party sustainability assessment of the company as a whole.

McMaster-Carr's record is strikingly clean for a company of its scale. Public scrutiny takes the form of profiles of its secretive culture, reviews describing strict internal policies, and customer friction over restrictive return and reseller policies. It faces routine OSHA and employment matters at warehouse sites but has generated no major regulatory action, litigation pattern, or scandal as of November 2026.