About ECON & ECAR

ECON Company was founded in 1975 by Ben Russell and Russell Lands, Inc.  ECON specializes in providing fuels for industry.  The primary thrust has been towards the use of forest and forest product residue to replace oil and coal consumption.  Since the company’s inception, ECON has provided nearly 5,000,000 tons of wood to industries across the Southeast, resulting in the savings of more than 5,000,000 barrels of oil.

Over the past 30-plus years, ECON’s efforts have included the successful development of biomass gasifier or “reactors” to power conventional automobile engines.  These gasifiers burn wood waste to create a combustible gas containing a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.  Several models of the gasifiers have been built and proven since 1979, each model improving on the previous design.  The mobile gasification effort began in the fall of 1979, when Ben Russell and a handful of ambitious ECON employees, set out to build a gasifier suitable for fueling a passenger vehicle.  Within six months, ECAR 1 had been created.  A 1978 Chevrolet Malibu station wagon, ECAR 1, made a monumental coast-to-coast run starting in Jacksonville, Florida on December 2, 1979, and ending on the California Pacific Coast with tremendous media attention.  The entire trip was fueled solely by wood power.  Visit the Articles & Photo Gallery to learn more about ECAR.

In the mid-80’s, ECON also expanded its operation into the landscaping mulch and bark field with the advent of Pineywoods Mulch Company.  Pineywoods is also the provider of the wood-residue fuel powering many industrial boilers, and saving millions of gallons of petroleum fuel.