R A Mitchell Co Inc

The job that says the most about R.A. Mitchell isn't a house call — it's a pair of marine generators the company built for a research vessel studying great white sharks off the coast of Africa, as a southcoasttoday.com article described in 2011. This is a Popes Island power shop first: engines, gensets, pumps and transfer switches, sold, installed and serviced out of New Bedford. The company says it was founded in 1954 by Robert A. Mitchell selling Lister engines to the fishing fleet, and that the family's fourth generation runs it now. Its site describes the business as woman-owned and WBE/DBE certified — the company's own statement, not something confirmed against a registry. Its BBB profile names Jennifer DeMello as owner and Robert Mitchell as vice president, and lists 20 employees. Homeowners come here for standby power. A customer who had a 20kW generator put in at his house wrote in 2024 that the sales and service teams held to their promise to finish on time, correctly and safely after trouble with other contractors. In 2021 another owner said a backup unit bought years earlier had carried the house through storm after storm without missing. The parts counter has its own following. A 2024 reviewer said the shop had what he needed in stock roughly 95% of the time; in 2021 a customer brought in water-cooked exhaust manifolds off a Detroit diesel 8V71 and got them back clean. The marine side runs deeper still — a 2017 Commercial Fisheries News piece called the firm a source for John Deere-powered auxiliary drives and gensets alongside a line of Mitsubishi diesels, and a merchant mariner wrote in 2022 about the crew helping him troubleshoot a John Deere 6081 in his lobster boat. Google sits at 4.7 across 46 ratings. Not every visit lands. In 2021 a customer hunting a fuel switch for his generator said nobody would even look at the part, and he left saying he wouldn't be back — worth knowing if you're walking in cold with a small over-the-counter job rather than a scheduled install. Two founding stories also circulate: the company claims 1954, while its BBB page lists a 1966 start and 59 years in business. If you need a standby generator sized, installed and kept running on the SouthCoast — or a diesel serviced by people who spend most of their week on marine and industrial units — this is the kind of shop built for it. Before booking a home install, settle who handles the electrical hook-up and permitting, and ask for a recent residential reference: the detailed accounts of actual jobs here cluster in 2021 through 2024.