WESTFIELD STEEL WORKS
Summer Newsletter 2009
Westfield Steel Express: Moving Products Faster
Westfield Steel is delivering steel to its
customers and providing other hauling
services through Westfield Steel Express,
a recently-formed, authorized-for-hire
common carrier.
Prine says Westfield Steel’s goals are to
generate incremental revenue – in an
otherwise struggling economy – and fill
in the gaps delivery-wise during a typical
work week.
With processing centers in Westfield and
Terre Haute, Ind., the service is uniquely
designed to service customers rapidly and
insure on-time delivery.
“We found that we could provide a lower
cost alternative than many of the common
carriers,” explained Prine. “We made some
minor investments in equipment so that
we could haul more commodity types. As
the economy turned (and continued), we
have been able to increase our hauling
revenue.”
“We were looking to generate more
revenues with our existing asset base,”
said Fritz Prine, chief financial officer of
Westfield Steel. “We had 20 over-the-road
tractors and 21 trailers, and most were
on daily delivery routes throughout the
Midwest.”
equipment, building materials, steel coils,
agricultural seeds, and salt.
“Our main role will always be to support
the company delivering our steel,” Prine
said. “However, our flexibility with management, people, and our assets allows us
to take advantage of opportunities in this
difficult recession.”
In addition to their own steel types,
Westfield Steel now hauls many other
things like fabricated steel parts, lumber,
Some facts about Westfield Steel Express:
• The furthest haul North: Minneapolis, Minn
• The furthest haul South: Carrollton, Ga., just outside of Atlanta
• The furthest haul East. Edison, New Jersey
• The furthest haul West: Kansas City Mo, and Auburn, Nebraska
• Westfield Steel Express has hauled a wide variety of different materials:
shingles, coils, lumber, PVC Water pipe, Steel tubing, machinery, hot rolled flat bar and rounds, conveying systems, mulch, bags of carbon, specialized aluminum, lawn mower racks, cement products, a refractor, commercial
metal studs, and wood floors.
Contact Us
530 State Road 32 West
Westfield, IN 46074
call | 800-622-4984 fax | 317.896.5343
westfieldsteel.com
Summer Newsletter 2009
CUSTOMER PROFILE
Westfield Steel Employee
Service Anniversaries:
May
Flanders Electric Works with Westfield
Steel for Mutual Benefit
Marianna Hoffman
Many relationships don’t survive a 200
mile separation, but this is not true in
the case of Westfield Steel and Flanders
Electric, a motor manufacturing and
engineering plant in Evansville, Ind.
materials held to the quality standards that
Westfield has “helps save us time on layout
and fabrication. Their prompt service and
delivery is critical to meeting our needs
and our customers’ demands.
Robert Hargis
5 years
Robert Moore
4 years
Brett Alexander
1 year
“I remember working on a specific project
that required very large steel plates. Our
main vendor for large plate could not
provide the material in the time frame
that we needed it,” Mushrush said. “I
turned to Westfield Steel to figure out
what we could do. With Phil Harrison’s
experience and willingness to step out and
try something new, we had what we needed
in less than a week. They put us ahead
of schedule and gave us a more superior
product than we were expecting.”
Logan Page
1 year
In fact, Flanders Electric Engineer David
Mushrush relies on Westfield Steel as
a trusted way to enhance Flanders’
customer service.
“We use Westfield Steel as a tool to help
us meet our goals,” said Mushrush. “We
build a lot of very large electric motors
and bases, which sometimes stretch the
envelope of what materials are available
from the steel industry. During the design
phase of our product, I always rely and
depend on Phil Harrison with Westfield
Steel to let me know what product is
available to work with.”
Flanders provides a variety of electric
motor services to users worldwide, but
before those motors are shipped to their
end destinations they are manufactured
by Flanders’ engineers using steel from
Westfield.
“In that way, we are acting as a team to
build our product,” Mushrush said.
“Dependability and quality are just as
important as price in our industry and
having a company like Westfield working
with us makes us more competitive.”
According to Mushrush, working with
Westfield Steel has saved Flanders Electric
money and time. Both companies are ISO
certified, and Mushrush said receiving
2
18 years
Julie A. Doud
12 years
Richard Watkins
10 years
Vincent Beer
3 years
Herbert Lambert Jr.
2 years
Jeffrey Long
New Hire
(continued on page 4)
Stator frame of a 7000 H.P. Synchronous Ball Mill motor used to mill ore at a copper mine.
Summer Newsletter 2009
EMPLOYEE PROFILE
Karyn Prine Enjoying Her Retirement from the Road
Regardless of the business you’re in, keeping customers happy is the long-term key
to success.
Carmel Welding was one of her first official
customers and she’s happy to say they still
are.
we weren’t running three shifts every day.
These are the times when you sharpen
your skills.”
Just ask Karyn Prine of Westfield Steel,
who recently announced she is retiring
from the road.
“We try to be flexible and responsive
according to our customer’s needs,” Prine
said. “Building and maintaining strong
relationships is a sign of mutual respect
and trust. This is probably more important
today than it was in our infancy. With the
economy on the ropes, it’s important that
our customers know ‘we have their backs’.
We are all in a difficult time right now.”
Westfield Steel recently became an ISO
certified full-line steel Service center.
“I started at Westfield Steel three days
after Fred (Prine- Westfield Steel president
and CEO) did,” Karyn Prine said. “I’ve
always said ‘Fred and I came in together,
we’ll leave together. We agree that the best
way to stay in business over a long period
of time is to make sure the customer is
happy. They ultimately determine your
company’s long-term success.”
She has faith that as a company and country, “we will all come through this. We have
seen bad times, nothing like this, but some
of our people have never seen a time when
“The award was a validation of everything
we have tried to maintain over the years,”
Prine said. “It spoke a lot about the great
employees we have and the work we have
put into the company.”
Now that Karyn will have some free time,
she plans on spending a lot more time
with her grandchildren. Mia, Spencer and
Marcus, and doing volunteer work.
Before starting at Westfield Steel, she was
a librarian assistant with the Indianapolis
Public Schools. She has lived in Chicago,
Buffalo and New Jersey before moving to
Indianapolis in 1972.
“I enjoyed working at IPS, but Fred needed
someone ‘JUST for the summer’ to man the
phones,” Karyn said. “That ‘summer’ has
been 32 years long. The first few months I
was doing everything from answering the
phones, doing the books, taking orders,
buying product, working material and
loading trucks.”
One day Fred made the suggestion that
Karyn try outside sales – he said she could
come back to inside sales if after 5 months
she didn’t like it – 31 years later.
It was difficult in the beginning. She was
assumed to be an AT&T or a Xerox
representative more times than not.
Karyn said she could get into a Personal
Assistant’s office easier that way, in some
cases, but then had to prove she knew what
she was doing. She has been calling on
some of her customers for as long as she’s
been out on the road.
3
Now that Karyn will have some free time, she plans on spending a lot more time with her
grandchildren; Mia, Spencer and Marcus, and doing volunteer work.
Summer Newsletter 2009
DID YOU KNOW?
The lowdown on steel,
the world’s “environ-metal”
Anniversaries: (continued)
June
Fred Prine
32 years
Karyn Prine
32 years
James E. Powers
14 years
Gerald L. Keeney
12 years
Rodger Hendricks
9 years
Victor Young
8 years
Clarissa Wilson
7 years
Lori Hively
7 years
Samuel Garcia
4 years
Juan Hernandez
4 years
• Recyclability and recycled content are another factor that has moved to the forefront of steel’s benefits.
Enrique Martinez
4 years
Martin Cesar
2 years
Kelvin Thompkins
What will you do with that can once you’ve dumped its contents into the pot on the stove?
Will you toss it in the trash or recycle it? And what becomes of all those recycled cans?
Steel that is made for construction, as is often the case with Westfield Steel products, is
often times made from steel cans and other steel products recycled yesterday.
According to the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI):
• Steel has long been the building material of choice for commercial construction for reasons of strength, durability and stability.
• Steel construction material is every bit as recyclable as the common soup can.
• Steel construction material’s recyclability is possible because steel scrap is an
essential ingredient in making new steel.
• As steel is recycled, it maintains its strength and integrity so it can be made into one quality product after another.
• It is for these reasons that steel has taken hold in other forms of construction,
including residential home building, steel roofing and large construction projects, including steel bridges, culverts and utility poles.
So, as the SRI puts it, when companies buy steel, they are buying recycled. In today’s
environmentally-concerned world, used steel cans can be recycled into part of a guard
rail, and that guard rail may one day be recycled into an appliance. All new steel products
made from recycled steel can be recycled again – it’s a cycle of recylability.
Greg Morton
1 year
New Hire
July
Brett Clem
29 years
William R. Jackson Jr.
19 years
Cheryl Godleski
10 years
Elias Flores
9 years
Adena Vaughn
6 years
Gonzalo Sanchez
5 years
Wendy Van Korn
4 years
Fritz Prine
2 years
William Skeens
1 year
Richard Hamrick
1 year
August
Sammy Fisher
10 years
Michael Murray
10 years
Lisa Deakyne
6 years
Miguel Rodriguez
6 years
Judith Heinlein
4 years
Dennis Pratt
4 years
Donald Thompson
3 years
Victor Gonzalez
2 years
Jorge Gomez
4
1 year
Clay Gill
New Hire
Joe Sellars
New Hire
Barry Brandle
New Hire
Mick Lugenbeal
New Hire
Scott Cherry
New Hire