Why did a carpet cleaning business in Ohio, take the name Stanley Steemer, a name close to that of the most famous car manufacturer who used steam power, Stanley Steamer?

When Jack Bates started out, indoor carpeting was just starting to become popular in American homes, thanks to a new process that cut the cost of making carpets in half.

Today, Stanley Steemer is the biggest carpet-cleaning company in the nation.... and they began with one man cleaning carpets the hard way in 1947. Then in 1970, his son graduated college and they built a truckmount steam machine and water extractor.

https://www.dispatch.com/article/20091101/NEWS/311019814

While developing the first company-made carpet-cleaning machine, father and son coined what later became the company name.

“I get a call -- it was 9:30, 10 at night,” Wesley Bates said. “Dad’s been drinking and he says, ‘I’ve got a name for the machine we built!’ And he said, ‘Either Jack Rabbit Cleaner’ -- after my Dad’s first name -- ‘or Stanley Steemer,’ ” partly a bow to the old automobile Stanley Steamer and partly inspired by the machine’s water-cleaning method.

“And I said, ‘Dad, Jack Rabbit sucks.’ So he said, ‘OK, it’s Stanley Steemer.’ ”

But it was the machine, not the company, that was initially so named.

“What happened was, we put ‘Jack Bates’ Stanley Steemer’ on our two trucks, and when people would write a check, they would simply make it out to ‘Stanley Steemer.’ Finally, I said to my Dad, ‘We need to make this simpler,’ and it was relatively easy from then on to go with that as the company name.”

Two years after the “steemer” was developed, the company sold its first franchise. One of the early franchisees came up with the eye-catching color and design of the company vans.

So, there you have it, since Stanley went out of business in 1924, there was no one to dispute the naming rights.

Nearly everything about the invention of truckmount steam cleaning can be learned at https://historyofprofessionalcarpetcleaning.wordpress.com/tag/gene-bates/

Several guys worked out their own systems and pumps independant of knowing of each other, which wasn't easy to do before the internet.

Whether or not the cleaning van based Stanley Steemer company had lawsuits against any other company using the Stanley Steamer name, I don't know. I do know that in 1971 another company was marketing a clothing steam machine:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-1971-Osrow-Stanley-Steamer-in-just-Seconds-Steam-Wrinkles-Press-Lint-SS-9/143477878832?hash=item2167f2b030:g:C0MAAOSwxgBdQapg