After World War II young men came back from serving in the Armed Forces and began looking for career opportunities. This spurt of vitality coupled with economic optimism spawned the growth of wholesale distribution. A young ex-GI named George Brink from Florence, Alabama, who had been employed by Creamery Packaging Company in Atlanta as a salesman selling milk storage tanks, cream separators, milk bottle fillers and anything manufactured by the company that wasn't tied down, thought a lot about this concept.

In the early Fifties her married, started a family, and decided to complete his education at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He saw that the items he sold in Atlanta were not being distributed in Knoxville so he hit upon the idea of becoming a distributor for equipment used the the dairy industry. The idea was easy - generating seed monies could have been a stumbling block to his dreams.

Until one day when hitching a ride to campus he got a lift from a prominent Knoxville businessman who lent an ear to George's idea. Julian Morton, guiding light and owner of the H.T. Hackney Company, wholesale grocers, slowed to a stop on Kingston Pike and listened to the sales pitch of George's life. Did Julian Morton think the idea a good one? He did. Would he maybe help hie get started? He would.

After he filed Brink's incorporation papers, George procured a corner of the Hackney Dale Avenue warehouse for an office and sent for Ben Wolcott, a friend in Atlanta from his Creamery Packaging days and a Georgia Tech graduate, to come to Knoxville and join him in his new venture. George did the selling and Ben did most of the rest: quotations, engineering, installation, service, invoicing. The business grew steadily until finally they had to leave the limited warehouse space and establish Brink's in a new building on Hilton Road off Middlebrook Pike... bringing along additional employees like Ed Howard (bookkeeper), John Simpson (sales and purchasing), and Bob Tarwater (warehouse).

In the middle and late 1960's, Brink's responded to many opportunities to serve a more diversified clientele. Step by step Brink's expanded into beverage bottling, chemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals, material handling equipment, refrigerated merchandising units and shelving for retail stores.