Erik Rust landed his first job at Sel-Tech, a Chico aerospace industry manufacturing company founded in 1985, by thumbing through the local phone book. Now he’s both general manager and president of the company.

“I came to Chico from Redwood City in 1997 to go to Chico State and major in manufacturing technology,” recalled Rusk. “While I was in school, I started looking for part-time job in manufacturing. This was before people used internet a lot, so I started looking under ‘manufacturing’ in the yellow pages.”

Sel-Tech’s primary product was — and remains — airstairs, automatic hydraulically powered accordion style stair assemblies, which fold inside of the aircraft for storage.

Rust took a chance and cold-called Jerry Felken, the company’s founder and owner. After learning Rust had previous experience in manufacturing — during high school and summers, Rust worked the swing shift machining in his dad’s Bay Area plastic manufacturing company — Felken hired Rust to do some computer-aided design drafting for a special project.

After graduating in 2002, Rust left Sel-Tech and went to work full time for Sierra Nevada Brewery. After about six months, Rust realized the brewery was not going to be the place for him to build a career, so he called his old boss at Sel-Tech.

“Jerry’s quality assurance manager was ready to retire, so he asked me if that job would interest me,” said Rust. “I said yes and was hired to train with the retiring manager for three months. It ended up being two weeks, and there I was, a quality assurance manager at 21 years old and fresh out of college.”

After a few years, he’d worked his way up to general manager. While Sel-Tech was still “Felken’s baby,” Rust was running orders through the shop and managing the company’s eight employees.

Rust was there in 2007 when Sel-Tech took on a new manufacturing job: building a firefighting system for a Boeing 747 Supertanker. At the time, the 747 was the world’s largest tanker for arial firefighting and Sel-Tec’s job was to manufacture a system of 10 tanks with a total capacity of 20,000 gallons of either water or fire retardant that could be released by the tanks from the belly of the aircraft onto a fire.

“We went down to McClellan (Air Force Base) and crawled around the plane to see all the parts of the system installed,” said Rust. “They flew that plane for the Camp Fire in 2018. Knowing we built a system that protects life and property is pretty cool.”

In 2011, another Chico State manufacturing engineer graduate, Jason Teixeira, responded to an ad for an assembly technician at Sel-Tech. Rust said he immediately saw Teixeira’s “potential” and promoted him to production manager after a year. Now, Teixeira is also the company’s vice president.

In 2016, Sel-Tech branched out further into the aerospace industry and began manufacturing Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems, self-contained pressurized systems that force fluid out of a nozzle. Over the past eight years, the company has manufactured MAFFS for C-130s owned by the Columbian military and the Tunisian military as well as one for a C-27 owned by a private Italian firefighting company.

In 2018, after several years of working out the details, Rust purchased Sel-Tech from Felken and “convinced” Teixeira to be his business partner.

The company continues to build airstairs and MAFFS but has added ground support maintenance equipment like stands to hold plane engines and slings for removing the canopies for F-16 fighter jets — among other equipment — to its manufacturing repertoire.

“I really like working with the different products, building the different things for different companies,” said Teixeira.

Among those customers are Boeing, Lockheed, Erickson Aircrane, Neptune Aviation Services, Tronosjet Maintenance, Aerocon Engineering Company, Aero Air, Airspray Aviation Services, the United States Forest Service, Heico Aerospace and Jet Avion Corporation.

As the company expanded, so did its staff. Sel-Tech now employs 18 people. “One of the best things about the company is our team,” said Teixeira. “It’s a great group of very knowledgeable people. The retention is amazing. Some of our team have been here five or six year — and five of us, including myself and Erik, have been here 10 years or longer.”

Another “cool thing” about Sel-Tech, said Rust, is its location. The manufacturing facility is housed in a 25,000-square-foot hanger originally built for the United States Army in the 1930s at Chico Municipal Airport (now Chico Regional Airport). This location, right on the airport’s flightline, makes testing the MAFFS systems easy.

“We literally roll the MAFFS out of the hanger onto the flightline, chain it down, fill it with water, pressurize it and fire it off,” said Rust. “It’s really something to see. People in the airport community like to watch.”

Sel-Tech specializes in Computer Numerical Control machining, sheet metal manufacturing, precision sheet metal assemblies, weldments, machined parts, Computer Numerical Control bending, MIG and TIG welding, rolling, painting, hydraulic installation, electrical installation, partial design and drawing review services. And, Rust points out that it is “not just a machine shop.” It’s a comprehensive manufacturer that delivers finished product to its aerospace customers.

“We’re a one-stop shop. We do it all,” said Rust. “We make and install the MAFFS right here. The other products are installed by the customers who either fly in for pick up or have us ship the product to them.”

While Sel-Tech is a busy place, Rust said he and Teixeira are “always looking for new customers and ways to expand.”

“The company is geared to do manufacturing for the aerospace industry, and we have a lot of quality certifications for that industry, so that’s where we look for expansion,” said Rust. “We’re thinking about developing our own product line or to purchase a product line to build or manufacture instead of just manufacturing products that’s designs are owned by other companies.”

Reach Kyra Gottesman at kgottesman@chicoer.com