Billious makes a roaring donation

Billious of Porterville — a warehouse distributor of gasoline engines, generators and parts, and lawn and garden repair parts — has donated more than 50 pieces of equipment and teaching models to Monache High School’s Manufacturing and Construction Academy.

“We won’t be using these until we have a new program in place next fall,” said MHS instructor Phil Machado on Tuesday. “We are redoing the entire auto shop.”

Billious originally intended the small engines for a teaching purpose.

“They are instructional models they were going to use and didn’t,” Machado said. “Instead of putting them back on the shelves, they donated them to the academy. With these, and the [25] engines from Kohlers [donated in May] — it is really a good base for our engines program and the small gas engine and industrial power class we are developing to go along with the academy as an elective class.”

The Billious engines also came with a teaching engine — one that has been “cut away” exposing the internal working of the machine.

The engines and transmissions are small and gas powered, ranging from 5 to 20 horsepower.

“We’ve donated these off and on for several years to support the schools around us,” said Justin Billious, operations manager. “We do factory training to dealers, and when we are done with the training, we pass the engines along.”
Billious was established in Porterville in 1946.

It is a factory authorized central warehouse distributor for 50 lines of lawn and garden, industrial and generator equipment and service parts.

Each year, said Logan Padrnos, warehouse manager, for the past four years, they travel to train for new engine models. Once they do, they return and train an approximate 800 dealers each year throughout their service area, which includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Neveda, Oregon, Utah and Washington, as well as Guam and Saipan.

Yet they are never too busy for Monache.

“Billious is our industry partner at MCA at Monache. They partner with us, with the education of our students,” Machado said. “We are grateful for all they’ve done.”