July/August 2008
Don Lewon brought fresh ideas when he joined his father's scrap company, Utah Metal Works, in 1960, and built it into a successful, well-respected scrap enterprise where his own sons have worked alongside him for nearly two decades.
By Jim Fowler
Einstein's theory of relativity—E=mc2—means something a little bit different when applied to Don Lewon. In this case, the E stands for energetic—as well as enthusiastic, engaging, eager, earnest, expressive, and a host of other e-words that describe the president of Utah Metal Works (Salt Lake City). The mc part of the equation stands for Mark and Chris, Lewon's two sons, who share the e-traits noted above. (As for the squared part of E=mc2, Mark and Chris are decidedly not square.)
Does Don's energy and enthusiasm equal that of his two sons squared? It's a valid theory, with the proof being Utah Metal Works' 80-year track record in the scrap recycling industry, more than half of that under Lewon's stewardship. Though his path to success has had its share of bumps—including market shifts, environmental challenges, and some family head-butting—it has been a rewarding journey.
"For the most part, I see a smoothly functioning company," he says modestly, though he's always looking for ways to improve his operations. He concedes that his sons now "run the show," but the mustachioed Lewon—a tall, fit, optimistic 71-year-old—is far from ready to retire, still managing specific aspects of the business and continuing to lend a guiding hand when needed.
Following the Family Footsteps
Don Lewon grew up in the scrap business. His grandparents, Russian Jews, emigrated from their home country to New York in the early 1900s when his father, Harry, was 6 months old. After more than a decade of operating its own haberdashery, the family moved to Montana, enticed by relatives who were in the scrap business there.
Though their final destination was supposed to be Great Falls, Mont., the Lewons instead settled in the town of Glasgow. "My grandfather was so stubborn," Lewon says, "that when he got off the train in Glasgow and realized it wasn't Great Falls, he wouldn't admit he'd made a mistake." The family lived in Glasgow for years, and Lewon's grandfather went into the scrap, hide, and fur business. "That's where my father learned to buy and sell cow hides and sheep pelts," he says.
Harry Lewon attended the University of Montana in Missoula and later opened a scrap business, Lewistown Hide & Fur Co., in Lewistown, Mont., where Don was born in 1936. Don says his introduction to the scrap trade came early: He recalls traveling with his dad throughout Montana and western Canada as a child in the early 1940s. Well before he was 10 years old, he says, he "was down in the yard throwing scrap iron."
In addition to the scrap operation, Harry had a hand in a used equipment business in San Francisco with his brothers, Rubin and Louis, from 1946 to 1961. They also jointly operated Union Lumber Co. in Salt Lake City, which provided timber poles for the copper processing business. At that time, Don explains, copper smelters used green lodgepole pines to stir molten copper because the wood burned the oxygen out of the metal bath.
In 1950, Harry sold his scrap business in Lewistown and moved to Salt Lake City, with the family joining him there the following year. "I had a little culture shock moving from Lewistown to Salt Lake, and it was hard for a time," Lewon says of his teenage years. He attended Wasatch Academy (Mount Pleasant, Utah), which he recalls as "a wonderful Presbyterian high school that opened my eyes to the world." The school "attracted students from throughout the country and around the world," he says, adding that he still has friends from his days there.
During the summer, Lewon worked with his father and uncles, harvesting lodgepole pines. After graduating from Wasatch Academy in 1954, he entered the University of Utah (Salt Lake City), majoring in geography in the College of Mines and Mineral Industries. The summer after his first year of college, Lewon met Hymie Goldman, a family friend who owned Utah Metal Works, a scrap company he had founded in 1928. Goldman offered him a job working in his scrapyard on Saturdays, holidays, and summers. "He was a neat man, and I liked working there," Lewon says. "I would sort and clean brass, strip lead cable—it didn't take long to learn the difference between No. 1 and No. 2 copper."
When Goldman died suddenly in 1955, Harry Lewon and his brothers bought Utah Metal Works from the estate and, within a year, moved the company to another location in Salt Lake City, where it continues to operate today. "When they bought the business, I had no idea that five years later I'd be joining the company," Lewon says. "I had an offer from a mining company to explore mining opportunities in South America that intrigued me. And while I adored my uncles, I knew I wouldn't get along well with my father. Our philosophies were different."
Don chose not to go to South America. Instead, in 1959 he started working in the family's used equipment business in San Francisco. A year later, however, he found himself drawn back to Salt Lake City. In addition to returning to his friends and family, he says, "I decided I don't want to live in California. I want to live in Utah." He loves the state's climate and natural beauty, he explains. "I don't like the extremes of the summer and the winter, but we have gorgeous falls and lovely springs" which he has enjoyed while backpacking or flying planes.
Don began working for his father at Utah Metal Works and, as he predicted, they did not work well together. As a result, Harry suggested they ask Leonard Pollock, a scrap competitor of sorts in Salt Lake City, to join the company, and Don agreed. Harry was "absolutely convinced that Leonard would straighten out my shortcomings," he recalls. Shortly thereafter, however, Pollock came to Lewon and said, "Your dad wants me to help you see some things differently, but frankly, I agree with you."
The shocker came in 1973, when Harry said to his son and Pollock, "You guys have to see things more my way or I'm going to retire." Without skipping a beat, Don says, he decided to throw a retirement party for his dad, and he and Pollock took over the business. "It worked, and it was probably the best thing in the world," Don says. "Dad was 68 then and lived to be 73. He was really concerned about some of the things Leonard and I were doing," he recalls, but after his retirement, "I didn't have to contend with his objections."
When asked why he joined his father in the business, given their difficult relationship, Don explains it this way: "Dad was so steeped in conservatism that it kept him from doing things that I thought would be good for the business. He always anticipated another Depression." Don says he and Pollock "just saw the business differently, and as brilliant as [my father] was, he just couldn't see investing what had to be invested for the company to grow."
One of the company's first bold moves came in 1978, when it entered the wire chopping business. As the company built its reputation in that niche, Pollock fell ill with lung cancer and decided to leave the firm in 1986. The firm faced another challenge in the late 1980s, when the U.S. EPA made PCBs a major environmental issue. Utah Metal Works had done its share of scrapping transformers, which contain PCBs, and the EPA's enforcement actions cast a black cloud over the firm that cost Lewon "a lot of time, money, and years," he says. The battle had lingering effects and made him cautious about stepping into similar environmental minefields, which proved somewhat costly, he says in retrospect. "You don't make good business decisions as you go along," he explains. "You keep thinking this will happen or that will happen. It made me put off making some good decisions that would have helped the business grow."
Despite this environmental setback, Utah Metal Works rebounded and now processes a greater volume of scrap, principally nonferrous, than Lewon ever dreamed possible. "We're able to put volumes through our yard cleaner, better, and cheaper than we ever did in the past," he says. He marvels at the changes he has seen over the years in the technology and processes for identifying metals, which have expedited and improved metal sorting. "I spent a lot of time learning how to spark test and use acids to identify metals," he says. "That's all outmoded now. It's so nice to see someone point an analyzer at a piece of metal and get its identity instantly." He also acknowledges that computers make it "so much better and easier to run your business."
| Don's Dossier
Born: Aug. 23, 1936, in Lewistown, Mont. Education: Earned a B.S. in geography from the University of Utah College of Mines and Mineral Industries in 1958. Military Service: Served in the 130th Aircraft Control and Warning Unit of the Air Force National Guard from 1955 to 1961. Family: Married Sue Packard, whom he met in college, in 1961—"the best decision I ever made," he says. Three children—Mark, Chris, and Anne—and six grandchildren. Career: Joined Utah Metal Works in 1960, where he continues to serve as president. Personal Influences: Hymie Goldman, Utah Metal Works; Bob Kenkel, Federated Metals (New York); and Mack Cottler, Copper Alloys Corp. (Beverly Hills, Calif.). Community and Philanthropic Service: Served on the boards of the Wasatch Academy and the University of Utah. Held leadership roles in the United Way. Provides annual scholarships to the University of Utah. Supports the Ronald McDonald House and its aluminum tab program and the Salvation Army. Hobbies: Travel, skiing, and tennis. |
Welcoming the Third Generation
Don Lewon's story in scrap now involves his two sons, Mark and Chris. They followed in the scrap footsteps of their grandfather and father at an early age, growing up at Utah Metal Works and learning the business from the ground up. "They were picking up metal, doing sorting" as young teenagers, Lewon remembers. "They both enjoyed it. I didn't work them too hard," he jokes.
When Mark was a senior in college, Lewon told him that he was welcome to join the family scrap business—but only if he first worked at another scrap company for two years. The same rule applied to Chris. "I think it was a neat thing to do," Lewon says. "I think it gave Mark and Chris their own sense of being. Graduating from college, working somewhere else, and then coming back to the family business gave them a degree of credibility they wouldn't have had otherwise." (Both went to California to work for Levin Metals Corp., a firm with ties to an earlier generation of Lewons—Don's uncle Rubin and Rubin's brother-in-law, Dick Levin.)
Mark, who graduated from Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) in 1986 with a degree in economics, now serves as vice president of operations. Chris, a 1990 graduate of the University of Utah with a degree in business management, is vice president of marketing and administration. When they joined Utah Metal Works, Lewon admits that he wondered how the three of them would get along as business partners. "I really didn't want my relationship with the boys to be like my relationship with my father," he says. After working together successfully now for roughly 20 years, the results speak for themselves. "We're very open about what we're doing, and we do share," Lewon states. "I can't remember ever having a fight about something." He notes proudly that the three of them "get along well together" and have family dinners most Sunday evenings at his house. "That tells me we're doing something right."
Nowadays, Don gracefully acknowledges that Mark and Chris are running the business. "They are two good, smart, ethical businesspeople," he says. He views his current position as president as a hands-off role, though he still directs some company activities, such as managing its profit-sharing plan—"I've done a good job with that," he says proudly—and personally maintaining a couple of accounts. His general philosophy as president, however, is "you let other people do it." He admits that he still enjoys spending time with the company's yard workers, though. "We have 40 employees, and they have so much wisdom," he says. "We're a friendly group of people. They are very pro-company."
No Retirement Party Just Yet
In reflecting on his almost five decades in the scrap business, Lewon credits part of his success on never fighting against a market—"whatever the market says, that's what it is," he says. "We have to live with our markets. My feeling is, don't get uptight about it. Just make your sales and don't look back."
That can be difficult these days, he concedes, because the scrap market is affected by many more influences and makes larger swings than in the past. A few years ago, it was a "huge move" if the copper market changed five cents a pound in a year, he notes. Now it's common for copper to swing that much in a single day. "I've always looked at demand—to me, demand is everything," Lewon explains. "But today, prices move up and down with no relation to demand change." Instead, investors—particularly large-scale hedge funds—and currency shifts drive many of the market changes.
Despite having to deal with such dramatic market dynamics, Lewon has yet to tire of the industry. At 71, in fact, he doesn't like to contemplate retirement. "It scares the hell out of me to do that," he says candidly. "I enjoy the business, and I don't want to retire as long as I can contribute in a meaningful way. My hope is that wisdom will tell me when it's time, but right now I feel good about myself, what I do, and how I work with Mark and Chris."
Looking ahead, Lewon is optimistic about the future of both Utah Metal Works and the scrap industry as a whole. "Ten years ago I wouldn't have guessed we'd be where we are today," he says of his company. "Volumewise, we're probably 20 times larger than we were 48 years ago, when I joined the company, and the best is yet to come. I think we're going to have some interesting times, and I wish to hell I was 20 years younger to go through it. I just think there are some good things happening to our industry and our country."
That type of optimistic viewpoint defines Don Lewon. "Life is fun," he concludes with a smile in his voice. "I've always liked the expression, ‘The glass is half full or half empty.' For me, the glass is always half full. I'm just hoping the boys aren't planning a retirement party for me anytime soon." •
Jim Fowler is retired publisher and editorial director of Scrap.
Don Lewon brought fresh ideas when he joined his father's scrap company, Utah Metal Works, in 1960, and built it into a successful, well-respected scrap enterprise where his own sons have worked alongside him for nearly two decades.