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General Extrusions celebrates 65 years, looks to bright future
By Kalea Hall
BOARDMAN
Sixty-five years ago, a man with an eighth-grade education and a small amount of capital started an aluminum-extrusion company.
He did so with his street smarts, business background and a passion for hard work.
Fred Schuler’s General Extrusions business on Lake Park Road still stands.
Run by his grandson, Herb Schuler Jr., the company is making its climb back up from a recession that shook the company.
“I am looking forward to the future,” Herb Jr. said. “I want to rebuild the business.”
Let’s step back in time. The year was 1950. Fred Schuler, in his 40s, had an idea. He was working with his brother, also named Herb, at a company called Youngstown Manufacturing that focused on steel.
His idea was to move on from steel and focus on aluminum, windows and doors.
“We were serving the window and door market [in the 1950s],” Herb Jr. said. “[Fred] ventured more into the fabrication business. He wanted to do a lot of value-added fabrication.”
Fred established the aluminum-extrusion company – aluminum extrusion is a technique used to recreate aluminum into different objects for a variety of uses – in the spring of 1950. He found property on Lake Park Road and had the original General Extrusions structure built.
Herb Schuler Sr., Fred’s son and Herb Jr.’s father, who was president of the company from 1980 until 2010, remembers his father’s excitement about the start of his new business.
Herb Sr. was 10 at the time, but he vividly recalls his father driving up to the under-construction building at night, shining his car lights inside, because there was no power, and laying down tile.
He did that “so he could speed the process along,” Herb said.
It did. The building was complete in a few months.
The business began with nine employees the same year the Korean War started, which didn’t help. The war impacted the supply of aluminum.
“Just the fact that he made it from 1950 to 1953 was a minor miracle,” Herb Jr. said.
Survive he did. He was able to get more aluminum supplies after he went to Washington to fight for them.
The hard work didn’t stop there. Herb Sr. remembers putting together envelopes to help grow the business.
“We sent out a lot of mailers about the business,” Herb Sr. said. “That was the method of getting business.”
The 1960s brought the electronics industry into play, and that kept growing into the 1970s and 1980s before a lot of it was shipped overseas.
A heat sink, which cools the central-processing units in computers, was one of the products General Extrusions made, and still makes, out of aluminum.
Herb Sr. joined the company in 1961 as a sales engineer. He wanted to join the company because he wanted to see how he could help the business grow.
“We were always searching for new markets and new products,” Herb Sr. said.
The company grew into a broad list of industries, and much of the product was shipping throughout the U.S. and overseas.
There were additions and more additions at the business. The General Extrusions plant sits at 210,000 square feet, but only two-thirds are used for manufacturing today.
“We were able to find new methods of doing business that opened up new markets for us,” Herb Sr. said.
For example, in the 1970s, the company built a solar-panel system and put an array of the panels up at the plant.
“That was a whole new area that was never tapped before,” Herb Sr. said.
Although Fred passed on the company in the 1980s, he would still stop by.
“He came to the office to celebrate his 90th birthday,” Herb Sr. said.
Herb Sr. remembers Fred saying he never thought the business he built from the ground up would grow to the size it did.
Fred died in 1994 at 90, but a painting of him, along with some of his business principles, still stand.
The company still does secondary fabrication processes in house, so an aluminum extrusion can become a finished product. Some of the fabrication processes are precision sawing, assembly and forming.
General Extrusions also provides engineering support through the use of CNC machining, which is the process of using a computer to control machine tools.
The company used to do in-house anodizing and painting, but had to outsource that operation after the recession.
“Those were pretty rough years,” Herb Jr. said.
Before the recession, the company had some 300 employees and another location in Leetonia. Today, the company has 60 employees and one location.
But things are looking brighter for the Mahoning Valley company.
“Since 2010, business has more than doubled in size, and we are expecting an 8 to 10 percent growth in the business this fiscal year,” Herb Jr. said.
Last year was the company’s best year since 2010. A 30-percent increase in productivity allowed the company to purchase a $500,000 piece of equipment called a double puller, which will significantly reduce the company’s scrap rates.
The double puller will be installed in October.
In addition to the new equipment, lower scrap rates and lower operating costs, new business is coming.
“That should make for a strong 2016,” Herb Jr. said.
The company still works to manufacture products for a variety of markets from snowmobiles to vacuum cleaners around the clock. Hard work is still the backbone of the business, just like it was when Fred first began it.
“I want to diversify the business and grow it to be as profitable as possible,” Herb Jr. said. “I am looking for more opportunities.”
Herb Sr. told his son when he took over the company five years ago: “It’s your turn. I am not going to interfere in anything you are doing.”
He believes his son is moving the company in the right direction.
“I am very proud of [General Extrusions],” he said. “I am very proud of the people who work there.”