Category: 2015

Neil Schmidgall didn’t invent the portable conveyor, but his customers and employees say he made significant advancements to perfect them in the 1990s. Schmidgall, founder of Superior Industries in Morris, Minn., led the company as it developed a number of portable equipment advancements, including the FD Axle, which is still influential to the industry today.

Teamwork was a big part of both Schmidgall’s and Superior’s portable conveyor advancements in the ‘90s. Bob Hodgins, a former customer and friend of Schmidgall’s, says Schmidgall often met individually with aggregate producers to custom-design conveyors with them.

“Portable conveyors were out there, but it wasn’t often that they fit our needs,” Hodgins says. “They tended to be unflexible or semi-portable. But when I went to [Schmidgall], he’d custom make them with me.”

Hodgins says it was that flexibility, originality and respect from Schmidgall that captured his attention. Schmidgall caught the attention of others in the aggregates industry, as well, considering he helped Superior grow from a small, Minnesota operation to an international business within two decades.

A strange evolution of business

The growth of Schmidgall’s family business was an entrepreneurial evolution. Schmidgall’s grandfather started Hancock Concrete in 1917; his father started Schmidgall Sand & Gravel in 1940; and Schmidgall started Superior Industries in 1972. While each son down the Schmidgall line branched off to start his own aggregates-related business, Paul Schmidgall, Neil’s son, says the business has turned full circle, as Superior bought Hancock Concrete in 2011.

“The business had a broad focus [on concrete] in the beginning at Hancock Concrete,” Paul says. “Each generation narrowed the focus, though. The funny part is that we’ve gone back to broaden that footprint again.”

Neil says he considered leading Schmidgall Sand & Gravel operations when his father offered the position. But after weighing pros and cons with the family, he opted to delve into aggregate equipment manufacturing.

“At the time, I was starting a young family,” Neil says. “The sand-and-gravel work was seasonal, but manufacturing was a year-round thing. I saw the advantages of going more into manufacturing.”

Today, Superior has more than 1,300 workers. The company started in 1972 with just two employees: Neil and his wife, Linda. The couple started the business at the Schmidgall Sand & Gravel property in Morris, Minn.

Neil says he kept things simple at Superior in its early years, building and repairing conveyors for local customers, including his father, Wayne.

Although Neil’s father sold Schmidgall Sand & Gravel in 1976, Neil says Superior stayed at his father’s site and continued to grow.

Neil never dreamed the company would get big. But by the late 1980s, his business sprouted from a little family shop to one with hundreds of employees and customers.

Ideas, innovations and inventions

Hodgins can’t remember how he first came across Neil or Superior Industries, but he remembers multiple trips and phone calls with him to work on screening plant designs. During those talks, Hodgins says they would hash out equipment ideas. He adds that Neil usually contributed more to those discussions. The talks would last for weeks, Hodgins says, and after everything was agreed upon, they would shake on it.

Schmidgall’s father started Schmidgall Sand & Gravel in 1940.
“He was an honest person to deal with, and that can be hard to find in construction sometimes,” he says.

This one-on-one interaction was the norm. Neil says he regularly teamed with customers to customize equipment that matched their needs. And few companies were doing that in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he says.

The FD Axle, considered by many to be Neil’s biggest contribution to the aggregates industry, came from a customer’s request. Neil says a customer pitched the FD Axle idea to him in 1993. From there, he says he designed, patented and manufactured that idea.

Mary Erholtz, Neil’s daughter and director of marketing at Superior, says the FD Axle helps portable radial stacking conveyors to move easily from site to site by allowing conveyors to lift or lower wheels quickly.

“There was nothing like it before it came out, and nobody’s duplicated it up to this point,” Erholtz says of the FD Axle. “It really gave the company a foothold in the portable plant equipment industry.”

The FD Axle became a staple for portable plant equipment in the aggregates industry, she says. The innovation was made possible because of Neil’s willingness to customize almost all of his equipment with customers’ insights.

Possibly the second biggest feat accomplished by Superior during Neil’s time as CEO were the advancements to telescopic radial stacking conveyors. Micah Zeltwanger, CEO of Superior, says Neil encouraged two of his engineers to improve the design of these conveyors. The features added to telescopic radial stacking conveyors by Superior’s two engineers helped to popularize the product in the aggregates industry.

“The advancements some of our engineers made to telescopic radial stacking conveyors solved problems in the industry at that time,” Zeltwanger says.

Zeltwanger says Neil gave a considerable amount of input to his engineers on this project, while also giving them enough freedom to make some of their own decisions. He believes Neil’s leadership influenced the success of its telescopic radial stacking conveyors.

Values behind the equipment

Neil regularly teamed with customers to customize equipment that matched their needs.

While the equipment that emerged from Superior during Neil’s time as president and CEO was impressive, employees and colleagues say they are just as impressed with some of Neil’s leadership values that helped the company reach its goals. Many of Neil’s values have remained with the company even after his retirement in 2004.

His son, Paul, says Neil’s value of working with integrity stuck out most to him, helping him in leadership positions at the company.

“My dad did a good job, teaching that you can be successful at your job, even when you put faith and family first,” Paul says. “As a kid, my dad anchored those work ethic values in me, and now they’re also tied to the company.”

Zeltwanger believes giving employees opportunities to grow was always one of Neil’s most important contributions to assure the company would thrive.

“Some people tend to be smothering, always on top of people,” Zeltwanger says. “Neil tends to give people guidance and help them along, but at the end, he gives them enough freedom to be innovative.”

Even in retirement, Neil seldom sits still. Neil has kept busy, coming up with equipment ideas, whittling wooden crafts for his grandkids and sharing insight on the aggregates industry to anyone who needs it.

Paul jokes that although his father is retired, his official title at Superior is “coach.” It’s even written on his business card.

While it’s been challenging for Neil to step back as coach the past decade, he says it’s critical at this point in his life to let future generations make the big decisions.
“It’s not easy to turn over what you’ve worked on for years,” he says. “But if you want a business to be successful, you’ve got to give future generations some responsibility and coach them.”

A high-volume aggregate producer doesn’t become a top U.S. producer overnight. A series of growth-related moves are usually made, and those moves are typically made over a period of years, even decades.

New Enterprise Stone & Lime Co. Inc., a Pennsylvania-based aggregate producer with more than 90 years of history, has followed that model of periodic growth. Several men orchestrated New Enterprise’s growth over the years, including Paul Detwiler III, the current president and CEO of the family-owned company.

“The quarries have always been the backbone in how New Enterprise started,” says Jim Barley, New Enterprise’s vice president of sales who’s worked for Detwiler and his family for 41 years. “Over the years we grew into a large construction company, as well, not just doing blacktop paving but building bridges and new highway construction. We were and still are in the concrete paving business, as well as the blacktop paving business. These were a source of use for the materials we produce.”

Acquisitions increased the amount of materials available to New Enterprise over the years, and Detwiler and his father, Paul Detwiler Jr., were instrumental figures in the growth the company achieved.

“Typically, your expansion comes from acquiring somebody else,” Detwiler III says.

Seeking growth

New Enterprise is regularly active trying to rally support for highway funding.

New Enterprise made two key acquisitions in the early 1970s in Martin Limestone, a producer in Lancaster, Pa., and Valley Quarries, which was located in Chambersburg, Pa. The company’s next major acquisition came in 2000, when Buffalo Crushed Stone was brought into the fold.

“Prior to purchasing Buffalo Crushed Stone, all of our quarries were in Pennsylvania,” Barley says. “With that [acquisition] came multiple blacktop plants and ready-mix business. It put us into the state of New York in an aggregate and blacktop business where we had never been before.”

Another major acquisition was made in 2008 with the addition of Stabler Cos. That brought Eastern Industries into the family. The timing of the acquisition, with a recession that soon followed, wasn’t ideal. The recession forced New Enterprise to rethink how its companies were organized.

Detwiler III led a reorganization effort about two years ago that resulted in cost reductions, efficiency improvements and top-line improvements such as selling price.

“We reorganized about three times in the last year and a half, consolidated from five different construction materials entities and consolidated them about three different times,” Detwiler III says. “We’re now in essence running all three of those as more of a New Enterprise entity with the local branding and operations in three regions: eastern Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania and the western part of New York.”

Al Stone, who joined New Enterprise more than two years ago as executive vice president and CFO, worked alongside Detwiler III in the reorganization.

“In our particular case, [New Enterprise] went through quite a rough patch when the Great Recession hit,” Stone says. “In our industry, it was virtually a depression. [Detwiler III] recognizes the need to change.”

The company’s reorganization included a significant downsizing. The decision to downsize was a difficult one for the family and not a “typical New Enterprise move,” Stone says, but it was necessary for the company to survive and reposition itself for prosperity.

“To me, it would have been so easy for the family to say, ‘I don’t want to do this, let’s sell the entire business and walk away,’” says Stone, adding that the company has virtually doubled its profits in the last two years. “They didn’t, and I admire the heck out of them for their devotion to the family business and wanting to do what was necessary even though it was very difficult to do.”

Career path

Although Detwiler III’s current role is administrative in nature, his experience with the family business formed in a number of areas. After graduating from Lehigh University, Detwiler III started with New Enterprise in its IT department. He says he worked on the company’s mainframe programming applications, and as PCs evolved, he got involved in those.

“I got involved in plant automation, and I still do some of that,” Detwiler III says. “Back in the early 1980s we had written [a program for] an online scale ticketing system. There were a couple out in the world at that point.”

Also, Detwiler III helped to put New Enterprise online in real time with data circuits during the ‘80s.

“There were others doing it,” he says, “but we were out there in the beginning as far as having information in real time versus a batch process.”

Detwiler III took over as CFO in the early 1990s and held that position for about 15 years, before taking over as president and CEO.

“He’s grown up in the industry and grown up at New Enterprise,” Stone says of Detwiler III. “His experience helps us a great deal.”

Detwiler III and his father are men his employees enjoy working for, as well.

“They’re very creative and very well-liked individuals,” says Kevin Reed, New Enterprise’s executive vice president and COO.

Stone agrees that Detwiler III and his father are great people to work for.

“They listen to your issues,” Stone says. “They’re incredibly supportive, patient and loyal.”

Industry advocate

Detwiler III is a supporter of the greater industry through his efforts with associations, including the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association (NSSGA). He’s currently the chairman of NSSGA, prioritizing the implementation of Rocks Build America, the association’s strategic plan to rebuild the nation’s crumbling transportation infrastructure, create jobs and drive economic growth.

Detwiler III values the national association because of its ability to advocate on behalf of others.

“We’re one of the more regulated industries,” he says. “A single company can’t [advocate] on their own.”

Detwiler III is optimistic about the passage of a long-term highway bill these days because infrastructure is actively parts of decision-makers’ discussions.

“The fact that everybody seems to be talking about it is good,” he says. “I don’t know if it will happen by May. I’d love to see that happen, but there’s enough talk and discussion now that it’s on people’s minds.”

According to Barley, Detwiler III’s involvement in NSSGA ultimately benefits New Enterprise.

“It would be easy not to involve yourself in the different trade associations because it’s an investment of your time and resources,” Barley says. “But his involvement tells me that he looks at the bigger picture and the good of the whole industry.”

Two hundred years ago, building a two-mile macadam road was a daunting task. Today, it’s not a problem because of Eli Whitney Blake’s stone crusher.

Born in 1795 in Westborough, Mass., Blake had the family talent for creative thinking and devising innovative solutions to challenging tasks. His father was a farmer, and his uncle, Eli Whitney, invented the cotton gin.

Blake attended Yale University and graduated in 1816. Following graduation, he pursued a law degree at the Litchfield Law School.

During his second year at Litchfield, Blake was summoned by his uncle, Eli Whitney, to help him expand his arms factory near New Haven, Conn., along with Blake’s brother, Philos. After his uncle’s passing, Blake and his brother took over Whitney Armory until 1835.

That year, Blake and his brother, along with another individual, John, started a factory of their own called “Blake Brothers.” The factory made door locks, latches and other domestic hardware items. This company was the first in the country to introduce “mortise” door locks and latches.

The “Blake crusher”

In 1880, the business closed as a result of increased competition. By that time, Blake had established his claim to fame as the inventor of the revolutionary “Blake crusher.”

The process was not easy, though.

It began in 1851, when Blake was appointed by a committee for the town of New Haven, Conn., to construct a two-mile macadam road.

A task like this had never been done before.

Made of evenly broken stones compacted together and layered with a coating of binder, macadam roads, at the time, could only be created by hand with hammers and had to be smoothed over by travel. According to “Eli Whitney Blake, Scientist and Inventor” by Henry T. Blake in Volume VIII of the 1914 Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, two days of labor could only produce one cubic yard of road metal.

“No work of the kind had then been done in the neighborhood, and I believe that at the time there were not a dozen miles of macadam road in all the New England states,” says Blake in the New Haven papers. “The importance of a machine to do the work became immediately obvious and from that time for a period of seven years, scarcely a day, or an hour, passed in which my mind was not mainly occupied with the subject.”

It took three years before Blake devised the idea of the stone crusher. He concluded the machine would require “a pair of upright jaws converging downwards,” according to the papers.

Blake received the patent for his crusher on June 15, 1858, but by the time he had constructed the machine, the patent expired. Without the exclusive right to manufacture the machine, others had begun to take the stone crusher to market.

This didn’t change the machine’s identity as a “Blake crusher,” though.

“All of these machines are generically ‘the Blake crusher,’ and are so recognized by engineers and experts all over the world,” says Henry T. Blake. He goes so far as to say the terms “jaw crusher” and “Blake crusher” are synonymous.

Transforming the industry

In 1872, Blake applied for an extension of his patent.

At the time, the law required those applying for patents to submit the labor costs and value of the invention to the Commissioner of Patents for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. When Blake applied for the extension, about 509 of his machines were in use throughout the United States, so he was able to demonstrate the cost-saving ability of the crusher.

Blake went on to form the Blake Rock Crusher Co., and more than 500 of his machines were in use by 1879. According to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Blake estimated the crusher, by that time, had saved its users about $55 million.

Blake didn’t live to see the 20th century, but his impact was felt throughout it, revolutionizing a number of industries.

If asked to build a macadam road today, Blake would probably say it’d be a breeze.

Glen Barton was destined to “bleed yellow” since he was five years old, when his father purchased the first family tractor.

“At six or seven, I could drive it and do everything you could do with a farm tractor,” says Glen Barton, retired chairman and CEO of Caterpillar. “It was sort of in your blood.”

Barton worked at Cat for 43 years, but his interest in the industry didn’t start when he joined the company—it began long before that.

At a young age, Barton had a fascination with the way things worked, and he taught himself about engines using an unlikely tool: a washing machine.

“Washing machines used to have gas engines on them,” he says, describing how he used to remove the engine to tinker with it.

Throughout his youth, Barton ran his family farm in southern Missouri with his two older brothers. He then followed in their footsteps to become a civil engineer.

Barton graduated from the University of Missouri in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. Following graduation, he immediately joined Caterpillar as a college graduate trainee. His career took a turn when he accepted a marketing position at the company.

“I was actually interviewing for an engineering job,” he says. “I was surprised when I ended up getting invited to further interviews in Peoria for a marketing job.”

Prior to his promotion as chairman and CEO, Barton held a number of positions at Cat, including sales associate, manager, vice president, executive vice president and group president. His career sent him to a number of regions, including Latin America, Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, Africa and the Middle East.

“I spent a lot of time on airplanes,” he says.

Growth and prosperity

Throughout his career, Barton spent a tremendous amount of time on product development, and he played a part in the evolution of the equipment, from cable-operated to hydraulic to electronically controlled high-pressure hydraulic equipment.

As chairman and CEO of Caterpillar, he concentrated heavily on industries that offered economic growth, keying in on the mining industry.

“I feel what I learned from the mining industry was significant.” he says. “I got heavily involved with mining companies and their professional organizations and helped broaden our product line significantly.”

When Barton began working at Cat, the company’s product line consisted of about 10 models of equipment for road building. When he realized the economic opportunities available in mining, he spearheaded Cat’s entry into the industry.

“He recognized very early that mining was going to be very, very important for Caterpillar, and to not play in that arena to the greatest extent practical would be a big mistake,” says Jim Parker, former vice president of the Americas Distribution Division for Caterpillar and current CEO of Carter Machinery. “He was very passionate about Caterpillar success.”

Barton’s involvement in the mining industry, as well as other industries, helped to greatly expand Cat’s product line.

“It became a major sector of our overall business success,” Barton says. “The key thing there was [offering] larger equipment.”

Despite his success in the aggregate and mining industries, Barton had to face some challenges stemming from the economic downturn.

“We had to make some tough choices,” he says. “We elected to get out of the agricultural business simply because it was robbing resources, at a time when we couldn’t afford to do so, from other product lines that were very successful.”

Six Sigma

As chairman and CEO of Caterpillar, Barton helped pave the way for a significant culture change within the company.

“Within Caterpillar, we changed the culture, in my opinion, by doing two things,” he says. “We organized into business units where we had these 15 different profit centers that were responsible for producing results and developing product. Then the introduction of Six Sigma addressed some of our quality problems and organizational issues.”

Six Sigma, introduced to the company in 2001, is an integrated, disciplined strategy geared toward improving facets of an organization based on historical information and data, as well as optimizing efficiency and success. It strays away from making common-sense decisions and harbors the importance of fact-based decisions.

“Internally, Glen was really known for his Six Sigma thrust,” Parker says. “Forever, he’ll be known as the ‘Father of Six Sigma’ for Caterpillar.”

The integration of this strategy helped stimulate employee efficiency and organize the company. It also encouraged a refined sense of unity that Barton fostered with his employees.

“Whenever I visited one of our manufacturing plants, I insisted on having an opportunity to meet with all of the employees, if possible, or at least a segment of the employees each time, to convey my knowledge of what they were doing and give them some feedback and appreciation for what they were doing,” Barton says.

Barton’s people-oriented personality and leadership eventually led Caterpillar to grow from a $685 million company in 1961 to a $30 billion company in 2004. Today, his legacy at Caterpillar is felt every day through the company’s continued success in economic growth and expansion.

“We have an expression around Caterpillar that you get ‘yellow blood,’” Barton says. “And I certainly am one of those individuals that ended up with a full tank of yellow blood.”