2019 : PQ Hall of Fame

Washington Samuel Tyler

The secret to success is one simple concept.

This phrase rang true for Washington Samuel Tyler, who founded his wire-weaving mill in September 1872. Tyler sought to create products that were not an end in themselves, but means by which his customers could complete something useful and profitable.

This simple notion would be the building block of a successful business that still thrives today.

Starting out

W.S. Tyler’s first wire weaving mill was founded in September 1872 in Cleveland. Tyler’s company was originally called Cleveland Wire Works, but the name soon changed to W.S. Tyler. Washington Samuel Tyler spent much of his life in Ohio, and a W.S. Tyler production site remains on the east site of Cleveland today in Mentor, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Haver & Boecker

Tyler, a descendant of a Connecticut family, was born on April 10, 1835, in Cleveland. His parents settled in Ohio City, on the west side of Cleveland, because the northeast part of Ohio was allocated to Connecticut during the course of a resettlement policy.

Even though he grew up in Ohio, Tyler returned to his family’s roots in Connecticut for his education. After completing his studies, he worked at a textile store in Hartford, Connecticut, for three years.

Working at the textile store negatively affected Tyler’s health, so he returned to Cleveland, where he opened his wire-weaving mill, originally dubbed Cleveland Wire Works, in 1872. The company was renamed W.S. Tyler that same year.

The company started with only 11 employees, and the plant – built adjacent to the Cleveland Pittsburgh Railroad – was an old two-story building that measured 40 ft. x 75 ft.

Despite its small size, the company flourished. Tyler’s business and moral standards greatly contributed to the company’s success. At a time when customers had to be on guard about the products they purchased, Tyler upheld the notion that a successful business should generate a profit but also give customers their money’s worth.

Early innovations

After a year of operating in his tiny facility, Tyler’s company grew from 11 employees to 30. As the number of employees grew, so, too, did W.S. Tyler’s level of innovation and success.

The company originally produced woven wire cloth for a number of uses, such as garden fences, flower lattices, protective devices for fireplaces, woven screens for mines, elevator linings and more. The products were woven on wooden looms until, in 1878, Tyler introduced mechanical weaving looms to the operation – as well as wire crimped in stages. This helped to increase efficiencies and offer customers greater durability in their screen decks.

In 1910, Tyler introduced the Tyler Standard Scale Sieve Series, a scientifically designed testing sieve series that later became the basis for the development of the ISO standards used in particle analysis today.

According to Haver & Boecker, W.S. Tyler’s parent company, the principle of the sieve series became so essential that the United States and a number of foreign countries adopted it as a national standard.

The top image displays a conventional revolving screen, while the bottom displays a Niagara vibrating screen that operates with positive screening action. Washington Samuel Tyler’s company purchased the Niagara screen patent and developed its first four-bearing screen, the Ty-Rock, 18 years after Tyler’s death. Photo courtesy of Haver & Boecker

In 1914, the company launched the Ro-Tap Sieve Shaker, an industry laboratory standard that further complemented the product line and, in 1916, Tyler developed the hook strip for screen tensioning.

Tyler recognized a need to continue moving forward, and he saw an opportunity in vibrating screens. At the time, woven wire cloth was advancing and improving, while vibrating screen developments were stagnant.

In 1917, W.S. Tyler produced the first fully mechanical vibrating screen. Tyler died that year at the age of 82. He had more than 500 employees at the time, and his drive to innovate the screening industry remained a staple of his company as it moved forward.

Eighteen years after his death, Tyler’s company purchased the Niagara screen patent and developed its first four-bearing screen, the Ty-Rock. This was the first collaboration between W.S. Tyler and its future parent company, Haver & Boecker. The screen, which integrated positive screening action – coarse to fine – played a pivotal role in the evolution of screens in the years that followed.

W.S. Tyler today

While Tyler paved the way for woven wire and a number of screen developments, he was also attentive to opportunities for expansion and growth.

In the early 1900s, W.S. Tyler ventured into Canada, Mexico and South America. Following a discovery of gold, South Africa also became a market for W.S. Tyler products, followed by China, Australia, India and Malaysia.

In 1930, the Tyler family built a factory in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, to capitalize on the country’s booming mining industry. The family moved the Cleveland production site midway through the 20th century to Mentor, Ohio.

The new sites improved the company’s efficiency, convenience, material processing and working comfort, expanding the company name around the world.
Tylinter, more formally known as W.S. Tyler International, was established in 1958 through a joint venture between W.S. Tyler and Haver & Boecker, a manufacturer based in Oelde, Germany, that offers diversified processing, storing, handling, mixing, packing, filling, palletizing and loading solutions. The partnership catapulted the companies into a two-way international trade.

In 1969, when no family members were found to continue the business, W.S. Tyler underwent two ownership changes. It was owned by Combustion Engineering – now ABB – and known as C-E Tyler for 10 years, and then sold to a leverage buyout firm that ran the company for nine years. Haver & Boecker bought W.S. Tyler in 1998.

More than 140 years since Washington Samuel Tyler established his wire-weaving mill, W.S. Tyler and Haver & Boecker continue to hold true to their founder’s principles of integrity, value and outstanding customer service.

Today, the Tyler name lives on through a number of products, including the company’s signature vibrating screen, the Tyler F-Class. Tyler also continues to offer particle analysis equipment, wire mesh, filters and filter cloth, screen printing and architectural mesh.

W.S. Tyler continues to operate in Mentor, Ohio. Its Canadian manufacturing facility, which focuses on screening, washing and pelletizing technology for the mining and aggregate industries, rebranded to Haver & Boecker Canada in 2015.

“Haver & Boecker was born from innovation, and we continue to embrace it in everything we do,” says Karen Thompson, president at Haver & Boecker Canada. “The Tyler name is a reminder of our roots and the importance of putting the customer first.”

George Sidney

Long before George Sidney was named president and COO of McLanahan Corp., and before he became a sales engineer at the storied company, he was a youngster with a grand vision for his future.

Growing up, Sidney had strong interests in engineering and geology. He considered pursuing a career in each of these fields yet ultimately chose engineering, concluding that the pathway into the workforce was simpler.

Fortunately for Sidney, McLanahan contacted him shortly after he graduated from Penn State University, giving him the perfect opportunity to fulfill both of his boyhood dreams.

“Little did I know that I was getting into a company that worked with rocks,” says Sidney, who’s collected rocks since he was a kid. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”

More than 45 years since joining McLanahan, Sidney looks back on his career with great satisfaction. He started as a design engineer and soared to the highest ranks of a family-owned company that’s now in its sixth generation of executive leadership.

Over the years, Sidney innovated equipment, mentored the industry’s young aspirants and brought the construction aggregate industry together at critical times. He was a visionary who helped his company expand beyond U.S. borders, and he was a leader the greater industry in the United States could continuously count on through his association contributions.

“He’s very smart, very hard-working, very reliable and very productive,” says Ron DeDiemar, a longtime competitor of McLanahan who now serves on the company’s board of directors. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s one of the five or six strongest leaders that I’ve ever met.”

Humble beginnings

George Sidney, left, celebrated the 170th anniversary of McLanahan Corp. alongside Michael McLanahan, center, and Sean McLanahan back in 2005. Photo courtesy of McLanahan Corp.

Sidney spent his first few years at McLanahan on a four-person team designing equipment. He loved being a design engineer, but an opportunity surfaced early on that put him on a track to bigger things.

“Along the way, the president of the company, Roy Rumbaugh, approached me and asked me to consider going into sales,” Sidney says. “I wasn’t really interested in that, but he said I needed to think about this a little more.”

Sidney thought about the opportunity over a weekend, deciding he wanted to remain as a design engineer. Rumbaugh, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“I said, ‘Let me get this straight,’” Sidney says. “’Even though you’re asking me if I’d like to do this, I really don’t have much of an option.’”

Sidney reluctantly accepted Rumbaugh’s offer with a stipulation that he could return to engineering if he didn’t enjoy sales. Looking back, Sidney regards his decision as the best move of his career.

“It not only allowed me to be involved in the design effort, but to truly learn the application of all of our equipment,” Sidney says.

Sidney spent about half of his time on the road during these days, calling on customers in the Rocky Mountain region. His weekends were often spent at the office putting in extra hours as an engineer.

Several years like this piled up before Rumbaugh proposed another opportunity to Sidney.

“He said, ‘I got to have you managing the engineering department,’” Sidney says. “I said I felt uncomfortable doing that because we had hired a lot of really smart engineers since I left the department. These guys were so much smarter than me.”

Rumbaugh laughed and responded plainly: He wasn’t asking Sidney to be smarter than the engineers; he was asking Sidney to lead them.

“That was a real lesson in life for me,” says Sidney, who became McLanahan’s director of engineering at this time. “He truly put it in perspective.”

Rising up

As engineering director, Sidney added staff and put his department through a wholesale reorganization.

“We came out with a lot of new products, a lot of innovation,” Sidney says.
The new role also positioned Sidney to work closely with Mike McLanahan, who became company president in the late 1980s. Sidney assumed other job titles over the years, including executive vice president, COO and president, succeeding Mike McLanahan in 2004.

“When Mike asked me to take over, one of the things I said to him was I’d like to make some changes,” Sidney says. “If I can’t make some changes there’s no sense in me having a job.”

Together with Mike and his son, Sean McLanahan, who was named executive vice president and CFO at this time, a goal was set to double the company within five years.

“We wound up doing it in two,” Sidney says, “and then we doubled it again in three – and then again. We’ve grown the company tremendously. We grew from one global office in Australia, which Mike McLanahan started, to three offices in Australia and an office in Santiago, Chile; two offices in India; an office in the U.K.”

Acquiring Universal Engineering Corp. and the assets of Eagle Iron Works in 2012 contributed to McLanahan’s growth, as well.

“We recognized if we were going to go other places that we needed more product line,” Sidney says. “That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go after the Universal Engineering line – a more comprehensive line of crushing and feeding equipment.”

Through these years, Sidney kept the customer top of mind. He learned in his earliest years as an engineer that the customer’s input was central to everything McLanahan does.

“If you don’t know what your customer is thinking, then you cannot do your job as an M&S (manufacturers and services) entity,” Sidney says. “You have to know what they want and what their desires are if you’re going to be successful as a company.”

Sidney certainly made the commitment to bettering aggregate-producing businesses.

“George Sidney is the type of person you want to be around and exchange ideas with,” says Rob Everist, president at South Dakota-based L.G. Everist. “His easygoing personality combined with his knowledge of the industry has made him an invaluable resource to countless producers and manufacturers in the aggregate world.”

Greater commitment

Although the inner workings of McLanahan required his everyday attention, Sidney also regularly invested himself in aggregate industry organizations. Sidney first got involved in the National Stone Association (NSA), the predecessor to the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA), in 1987.

“I could see that they were sorely lacking in keeping track of things at their meetings,” Sidney says. “So I volunteered to be the secretary.”

Sidney kept all of the minutes from meetings. More importantly, he kept things moving.

“I was the continuity in the effort because they were changing chairman every year,” he says.

Sidney also participated as a speaker at regional NSA seminars on operations topics, educating producers on subjects of interest. And he’s been one of the key proponents of ROCKPAC, NSSGA’s political action committee, canvassing the industry for donations.

Sidney retired at the end of 2018, but he remains on the company’s board of directors. He’ll continue to attend industry trade shows and meetings to maintain his network of friends.

“I have been immensely rewarded through the friendships I’ve made in the construction aggregate industry,” Sidney says. “They are a unique people. This industry attracts salt of the earth people; honest, upstanding, good people.”

Of course, Sidney’s success at work would not have been possible without the support his wife, Leanne, continuously offered at home.

“When you consider that I have surpassed 2 million air miles during my career, that is a bunch of time away from home,” Sidney says. “She has never one time complained. The reason being is that she gets it. She knows and understands my commitment to the company and the McLanahan family of employees.”

Manfred Freissle

“You learn by doing.”

Polydeck Screen Corp. adopted this simple adage from its co-founder, Manfred Freissle. The adage not only serves as a motivational tool for the company, but it is a way of life for Freissle.

From leaving a broken Germany after World War II to working after hours in a garage developing an innovative product that set a global standard for screen media, Freissle made a lasting impact on the aggregate industry.

His determination, combined with his entrepreneurial spirit, was the driving force behind the development of synthetic modular screen media – an innovation that changed the screening universe forever.

Freissle’s contribution to the aggregate industry is the product of learning by doing. An electrical engineer by trade, Freissle jumped head first into the aggregate industry with no experience, and he emerged as a worldwide leader and expert in screen media.

The beginning

Freissle grew up in Germany during World War II, when he completed his electrical engineering apprenticeship. After experiencing Switzerland for a year of work, Freissle moved to South Africa to work as an electrical engineer on the railroad lines connecting major cities in the country.

While Freissle struggled with his English in South Africa, a fellow German, Helmut Rosenbusch, helped him communicate. A friendship developed between the two and led to Freissle’s introduction to the aggregate industry.

Rosenbusch worked as a woven wire master weaver for a South African company that manufactures wire cloth screen media for the aggregate industry.

Freissle, now introduced to screen media and the aggregate industry, decided to start a wire weaving company with Rosenbusch.

With Rosenbusch’s expertise and Freissle’s entrepreneurial spirit, the two created Screenex – a woven wire screen media company – inside a garage. The two worked after hours on a self-built weaving loom, fulfilling woven wire screen media orders for aggregate producers that larger wire cloth companies were reluctant to take.

Whereas larger companies preferred to take bulk orders, Screenex fulfilled orders for just one or two screens.

Freissle was involved in all aspects of wire screen manufacturing, from the initial order to delivery to installation. His heavy involvement around Screenex led him to question if there was a better way to approach screen media.

“My dad would hand deliver [the woven wire screens],” says Peter Friessle, Manfred’s son and the president of Polydeck. “When he would make the deliveries, he would cut his hands hauling these screens because they are heavy and cumbersome to handle. He said, ‘You know, if there was an easier way that you didn’t have to haul this big piece of metal around, that would be a gamechanger.’”

Ultimately, a call from a customer paved the way to Freissle’s solution.

The start of a revolution

Manfred Freissle, left, with Helmut Rosenbusch, an original business partner in South Africa. Photo courtesy of Polydeck

According to Peter, a customer called Manfred saying he was using polyurethane, or synthetic, material on wear parts. Manfred saw the potential and thought: “How do we use this material in the screen media arena?”

“He thought to himself, ‘If I broke a tile, I wouldn’t have to change the entire floor; I would just have to change one tile,’” says Peter, explaining his father’s thought process. “‘If I could somehow take the polyurethane high wear material but do it in the form of a tile, you could take one tile out and put one tile back in.’”

Thus, the synthetic modular screen was born.

Manfred developed modular synthetic screen media, and each modular panel had “pins” that were used to hold each tile on the screen frame. The original model Manfred developed had 20 pins, but only four pins per square foot are used today.

Selling this innovative product was at first a challenge for Manfred.

“As with anything that is new, there is a resistance to change,” Peter says. “There was a big reluctance to even try the concept in the beginning. People would say, ‘You’re crazy, this is never going to work.’”

To convince aggregate producers in South Africa, Manfred gave several of these synthetic screens to producers for testing. It was slow to start, Peter says, but the product eventually built momentum with producers.

“It is not a little more expensive,” Peter says. “It was about 10 times more expensive, but it would last about20 times longer. That was the selling feature.”

The development of modular synthetic screen media led to less downtime, less cost of ownership for producers and to more than 40 worldwide patents for Manfred.

After receiving a U.S. patent on the screen media, Manfred made the move to Spartanburg, South Carolina, with Polydeck co-founder Dieter Egler. According to Peter, the Chamber of Commerce in Spartanburg offered incentives to establish Polydeck Screen Corp. in the city. The German community, German club and German beer festival were also helpful in the decision to move to Spartanburg.

“We wound up here in Spartanburg because of the German beer,” Peter jokes.

The legacy

To Peter, his father’s greatest career accomplishment is the globalization of modular screen media.

Outside of his work, Freissle is a family man anchored by charity and his strong faith. Even considering the globalization of his work, Manfred measures his success through his family and charity work.

“He left a broken Germany and [his family] thought he wouldn’t amount to anything,” Peter says. “There was this huge drive in him to succeed. One day his dream was to buy his mom a house to replace the one that was bombed. His goal was to be successful enough to buy his mother a house. That is what drove him.”

Manfred’s Catholic faith was also important to him. From age 8, Manfred went to church every day and lived near a Sisters of Mercy convent. Because Manfred came into some success in South Africa, he donates to a local Sisters of Mercy convent to show his support. He is still active in philanthropy events today.

These experiences were the root on which Polydeck lives out its vision statement: “To serve our customers and stakeholders with excellence, to achieve profitable growth which enables us to care for people in a way that honors God.”

Manfred, a father of five, devoted his life to his family. His faith and family are major driving forces behind his determination.

“He is an awesome dad and his hobby is his family,” Peter says.

Gene Fisher

Born and raised on a farm in North Dakota, Gene Fisher was a problem solver with a knack for entrepreneurship and ingenuity.

In 1952, at the age of just 24 years old, Fisher established Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. and laid the foundation for what would become one of the largest sand and gravel producers in the United States.

“Dad finished up with his high school education and people said ‘you became very successful without a college education,’” says Tommy Fisher, Gene’s son and the current president of Fisher Industries. “He missed his high school picnic to screen gravel. Dad was always an entrepreneur.”

Gene, who died in 2013, realized that maintaining and repairing equipment was costly. Faced with a business challenge, he did what he was best at: solving problems.

“He saw problems very differently than the average person,” says Florian Friedt, vice president at Fisher Industries. “He didn’t look at them as ‘we have to deal with this,’ but rather as an opportunity. It’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity. Problem solving was what he lived for, along with helping others.”

Industry innovator

In 1967, Gene launched General Steel & Supply Co., the equipment support arm to Fisher Sand & Gravel. This allowed him to be innovative when building custom and top-quality aggregate processing equipment.

“That was always Dad’s greatest move,” Tommy says of General Steel & Supply. “Crushing is an abusive sort of business. When you break rock, it’s hard on equipment. So when you have your own equipment and can build it a little more heavy duty, it makes you that much more successful.”

General Steel & Supply made it possible for Gene to design, fabricate, field-test, demonstrate, assemble and deliver custom equipment not just for Fisher Sand & Gravel, but also for aggregate companies throughout the industry.

“Dad always had a knack on the engineering side to draw designs for screens or how to set up crushers on napkins,” Tommy says.

The establishment of General Steel & Supply not only introduced Gene to new business opportunities, but to his wife, Sheila. Gene and Sheila married in 1969 when the company opened.

“They put everything on the line for the business and made it through,” Tommy says.

Water shortages in the region posed yet another challenge for Gene. Once again, he solved a problem.

Using his ingenuity and problem-solving skills, Gene curtailed water shortages by patenting his own classification system – the Fisher Air Separator. The signature piece of General Steel & Supply, the Fisher Air Separator helps to remove fine particulates from manufactured sand using air instead of water.

This development not only solved water shortages in the region, but it put Fisher Industries on the global map with equipment sales in 14 countries.

“The air separator is so important to us because, as road specifications changed, a lot of areas wanted cleaner material in their hot-mix,” Tommy says. “A lot of places don’t have adequate water that you can use to wash out finer particles. There were classifiers out there, but they didn’t work the way they should, so [Dad] and the staff invented the [Fisher] Air Separator and it’s been a godsend.

“It’s very portable, and it even works if your material has a bit of moisture in it – more than a regular classifier would work,” Tommy says. “It’s inspired us to come up with new ideas for patents.”

Remembering his roots

Gene Fisher, left, attended a number of equipment auctions with his son, Tommy, as he prepared him to lead Fisher Industries. Photo: Fisher Industries

Even with an established, successful business, a signature product and a name known throughout the industry, Gene maintained his simplistic approach to his work while setting an example for those around him.

“He was relentless with his work ethic and he was very hands-on working right alongside you doing projects – it didn’t matter if it was shoveling, welding, bolting,” says Friedt, who started working at Fisher Industries in 1974. “He never asked you to do something he wouldn’t do himself.

“One day he said, ‘You guys overcomplicate it. We’re taking big rocks and making them little rocks.’ He was always teaching, and he would go into the details of how everything worked or why it didn’t work.”

Even as Fisher Industries expanded beyond domestic and international borders, Gene never forgot where he came from.

“Dad was very proud to be from North Dakota, especially Dickinson,” Tommy says. “He called Dickinson the Sun Belt of North Dakota. If it was minus 30 [degrees] in Grand Forks, it was only minus 10 [degrees] in Dickinson.”

As a kid, Tommy saw firsthand his father’s tireless work ethic and dedication to his business and the industry as a whole. Gene’s passion for his work wasn’t just what he did, but it encompassed who he was.

“Growing up, Dad was always working,” Tommy says. “A lot of people said he was a workaholic, but in the end it was his passion and he was a good dad and supported us. As a young kid, we always had Tonka trucks under the [Christmas] tree. We got to go out in the field with Dad and we ran real Tonka trucks – big loaders and big trucks. I really enjoyed sitting on his lap and running the dozer or loader or excavator and feeling that power.”

Lasting legacy

As Tommy grew up, he learned the business and worked closely with his father.

The two often attended equipment auctions as Gene taught Tommy the ropes of the aggregate industry.

“I got to know my Dad so much more when we became partners and worked together,” Tommy says. “I think the best memory I ever had is that Dad had faith in me at 25 years old to basically turn the company over. He said, ‘There are going to be things that you sink or swim [with], but I trust you, you’re smart and you have it.’”

Not only did Tommy get to know his father from the standpoint of a business partner, but he watched his father become a grandfather to his own kids.

“I really enjoyed him getting to become a grandfather with the kids; the grandkids really softened him up,” Tommy says. “Today, the third generation of this company has the chance to really make it. Before Dad passed, I said ‘you’re in great hands and have a few grandkids who are even smarter than I was at that age.’ What more can you ask for?”

Gene’s legacy lives on in the aggregate industry and through the foundation he laid at Fisher Industries.

“He lived a great life,” Tommy says. “Coming from nothing and building what he did, it was never about the money. It was always about the equipment, the quality, to be the best. He was the catalyst that started what we are today. I remember his last day and I told him, ‘you left no stone unturned or uncrushed.’ My hope is I end up the same way.”