From Tragedy to Triumph

Any of the Koplin brothers will tell you they’ve heard horror stories about family-run scrap businesses.
   Then they’ll tell you proudly that their family-run business isn’t one of them.
  The three brothers—Evan, Chip, and Henry—and cousin Henry Oliner (who oversees the company’s steel service center) run Macon Iron & Paper Stock Co. Inc. (Macon, Ga.), a processor of a variety of metallic and nonmetallic scrap. Their style of management 
offers proof that a family-run business can succeed without being derailed by the usual family-business problems.
   Not that everything’s perfect all the time, mind you.
   “We have our differences at times,” concedes Henry Koplin. “Everybody’s got their own personality. Everybody’s got their own opinions. And we all aren’t afraid to express them. We pretty much say it like it is when we feel like it. But two hours later, it’s blown over, you know? We’ll have spats here and there, but whatever the spats are about, it’s all for the betterment of the company.”
   They must be doing something right. Not only has the firm been in business 81 years, but it doesn’t suffer from the “how-we’ve-always-done-it” syndrome.
   The company has consolidated from five plants to two for improved efficiency. It has survived a flood that could have put it out of business. It has established a new safety policy that has improved its record dramatically. And all the while, the firm’s principals are constantly looking for new opportunities.
   According to Evan, they always ask, “‘How could we improve on our current methods, our current procedures?’ I think that’s the key.” In his view, “the day you give up trying to do it the best you can is the day you go backward. And as long as you’re trying to find a better way to do it, you’ll keep making progress and get more efficient at it.”

A Move to Macon
On a wall in the offices of Macon Iron is an ad, thought to be the first one the company ever placed. It’s dated 1919, the year the firm started, and asks people to bring in their scrap of all kinds—from metal to rags to paper.
   The elder Henry Koplin, grandfather of Evan, Chip, and Henry, had been working in his family’s scrap business in Atlanta. But he wanted to strike out on his own, so he moved to Macon and went to work for a fledgling scrap business there. In 1919, he bought the company and placed the advertisement in the local newspaper.
  Koplin’s sons, Myron and Alvin, came into the business after serving in World War II. Alvin’s brother-in-law Joe Oliner—Henry Oliner’s father—also got involved in the business. 
   Eventually, the business was passed on to the third generation.
   “We’ve been very fortunate in the way our parents worked with us,” says Evan. “They basically realized it was time to give the reins over to us and got out of our way to let us make our mistakes. I’m not saying there weren’t some tough times, but all in all we’re very fortunate the way our transition worked from one generation to the next.”
And with that relatively seamless succession transition, Macon Iron averted one of the biggest horror stories of family-run businesses.
   In this era of scrap industry consolidation, the Koplins and Oliner are proud to be carrying on their company as a family-owned business. As Henry Koplin says, “Knowing our grandfather started this in 1919, who would’ve thought that in the year 2000 this company would be trucking right along with the same people. A lot of folks in the business today can’t say that, given all the buyouts. A lot of them have gone by the wayside.”
   And their pride in the family nature of the business is echoed by Myron Koplin, who has watched his three sons and Henry Oliner carry Macon Iron into the future. “I think they’re holding their heads above water,” he says with understatement.

Weathering the Storm
At one time—the week of July 6, 1994, to be specific—the expression “holding one’s head above water” wasn’t just an expression at Macon Iron. It was a necessity, as the company fell victim to flooding caused by tropical storm Alberto.
   Evan remembers that it started raining July 4—he was having a party that day at his house—and it didn’t stop for two and a half days. The company, which sits in the floodplain of the Ocmulgee River, soon found itself in the water’s relentless path.
   Company employees saved what they could. Some, for instance, took computers home with them, while others moved forklifts, skid-steers, and larger mobile equipment to higher ground. Evan and his production manager tried to canoe toward the production area to see what they could save, but the water pushed them back. “We got out everything we could,” recalls Evan. “Finally, at about 4 o’clock Monday, we decided we had to leave.”
   The flood washed away tons of the firm’s scrap as well as the railroad track near Macon Iron, cutting it off from rail service for a month and half. The flood also left the company with no power for two weeks. Making matters worse, Macon Iron had no flood insurance and had trouble getting federal assistance because, before the flood, it was financially strong. In fact, the previous month had been one of the company’s best months ever.
   The firm eventually hired a consultant to help it with its application for federal assistance. “I’ll never forget,” Evan says, “the consultant asked me what I thought our losses were, and I said, ‘I think we lost a couple hundred thousand dollars in inventory in copper and other material that got washed away, plus maybe another hundred thousand of damages.’ But when he got through with his estimate, if we repaired everything back to 100 percent, the cost was about $1.7 million.”
   In the end, Macon Iron did obtain a loan backed by the Small Business Administration, though it spent about $900,000 of its own money to get itself operational again.
   Today, the company has a constant reminder of the flood on the front door of its office, which bears a line showing the flood’s high-water mark. Even standing at the top of a short staircase, the line comes nearly to your waist, suggesting the immensity of the wall of water that rolled through the plant.
   Even now—six years later—Macon Iron feels the effects of the flood. For one, the firm is still paying off its federal loan. Also, memories of the flood make Evan consider offers from the city to relocate. “Would I like to relocate this facility if I could get it to where the costs made sense to do it?” he asks, answering, “Yes.” Then he adds, “But if I’m going to have to absorb the entire cost of trying to move the plant, no way.”
   Despite the destruction caused by the flood, there were a few bright spots. For one, Macon Iron learned a few lessons, such as the value of flood insurance. 
   Also, the flood showed how adversity can bring out excellence in people. As Evan explains, “One of our current managers was then in school at Auburn, working here during the summer. He had just organized the inventory in our maintenance department when the flood hit and destroyed it all. But he was tremendous during that period. So I told him, ‘When you get out of school, you come and see me.’”
   That manager—Walter Massey—has been with the company full-time since 1996, and he now manages the company’s retail paper division. Massey also designed the company’s new aluminum can operation. 

The Benefits of Diversity
When Macon Iron was founded, it handled a broad array of scrap materials. Today, the company continues to be a scrap generalist, handling metallic and nonmetallic scrap recyclables from industrial scrap generators, over-the-scale peddlers, and municipal curbside collection programs.
   Evan, in fact, considers Macon Iron to be “an industrial one-stop shop” that addresses all the recycling needs of its customers. And that continues to be its goal: To be able to take just about anything for recycling—from cars to aluminum cans to paper to plastics.
   That one-stop philosophy has given the firm a competitive advantage on more than one occasion. “We’ve been told in a couple of cases that our ability to handle all of a company’s recyclables is a great value, particularly to larger companies, because then they don’t have to deal with six or seven vendors,” Evan explains. “We can come in and offer them the total package.”
   Macon Iron used to serve its customers from five locations. But to make its operations more efficient and enhance service to its customers, the company has consolidated everything into two locations. “To me, space isn’t a blessing,” Evan asserts. “It’s a hindrance because you have the tendency to store material and not clean it up.”
   The firm’s two operations are currently divided as so: One is its main 20-acre scrap plant, where it operates two Harris guillotine shears (a 500-ton and an 800-ton) and a 600-ton Harris baler. The firm is also installing a new system for processing aluminum/copper radiators at this location, though Evan said he still views that as a proprietary process. 
   The other plant, located about three miles away, features two huge warehouses—one for deliveries of curbside-collected recyclables, the processing of cardboard and office paper, and soon, document destruction; the other for its new retail aluminum can operation (which, in true scrap industry fashion, Macon Iron fabricated almost completely from scrap materials). Material delivered to this plant all ends up being processed by a Harris HRB baler.
  Taking its two operations together, Macon Iron processes about 6,000 to 7,000 tons of scrap a month and generally ships to consumers within a 300-mile radius, though the company has done some export, especially of OCC.

Keeping It Safe
If it’s one thing Evan knows, it’s that a company can’t offer top-notch, one-stop services without good people at every level. And, in his view, Macon Iron has the good-people area covered. “Basically, we give our managers their targets and get out of their way,” he says. “They do a tremendous job. We’re very fortunate to have such good people.”
   Interestingly, most of the company’s upper managers previously worked for firms that had provided some service to Macon Iron. “When we see good people, we know,” Evan says. 
   Over the years, Macon Iron has approached the good people it saw and offered them jobs. And in most cases, the people said yes, which Evan views as a compliment to Macon Iron. To him, it means people want to work there.
   One reason people enjoy working for the company is that it cares about the well-being of its employees, especially when it comes to safety.
   The safety message is loud and clear out in the plant: “I tell the guys I want them to leave in the same condition they came in, and that’s basically our effort,” says Kent Baltzer, production manager of the main plant. “One of my statements to them is that a scrap recycling plant can be a very dangerous place if you don’t know the rules. Every employee is responsible for learning the rules and playing by them.”
   In 1996, Macon Iron went the entire year without having a lost-time accident, a feat it repeated in 1999. And the company seeks to continually improve its safety performance on every level, says Al Elvins Jr., director of human resources, safety, and environmental compliance.
   In his fours years with the firm, Elvins has spearheaded Macon Iron’s efforts to establish a “culture of safety.” The company’s safety committee is employee-led, giving workers ownership in the concept and practice of safety.
   “Another important point is that everyone in our organization is on a first-name basis,” says Elvins. “That’s important because people are more prone to open up to you and show you things that are wrong if you talk to them like human beings.”
Macon Iron’s safety teams conduct safety audits on their own, adding another level of protection to the audits conducted by Elvins. 
   Such practices positioned the company well when it was subjected to an OSHA inspection recently. Two inspectors were at the company for a week, and the company ended up being fined a minimal amount, Elvins notes. The company did well because its paperwork was in order and because of the “team concept of safety, management involvement, and the involvement of every single employee and the safety committee.” 

A Concern for Customers
As Evan Koplin conducts a tour of Macon Iron’s facilities, he notices that a train hauling scrap is stopped on the tracks, holding up a line of cars at the crossing. He’s obviously unhappy that his fellow Georgians have to wait for the train that’s bearing his company’s scrap.
   His concern isn’t surprising. Evan, his brothers, and Henry Oliner have a genuine interest in the well-being of not only their employees, but their customers and community as well.
  Chip Koplin, who runs the scalehouse, is the front line of Macon Iron’s customer service efforts. He knows many of the company’s scrap suppliers by name, and it’s easy to tell that the banter he exchanges with some of them has been exchanged routinely for years.
   To be sure, many of the firm’s customer relationships are longstanding ones built over the years, says Chip. And Macon Iron tries hard to keep in touch with its customers. Loyal customers, for example, might receive a holiday present from the company, and Macon Iron receives many cards from customers for special occasions.
   The company has built such close customer relations, in part, by dealing with them fairly throughout the years. One day, for example, a scrap hauler brought in a load of materials, and, due to mixed communications, thought he’d been promised more than his scrap was actually worth. Chip and the hauler quickly came to a compromise on price—above market value, though not what the hauler was asking. 
   The misunderstanding was averted, and the firm’s relationship with this long-term customer was preserved.
Such customer-focused service and sensitivity has enabled Macon Iron to maintain win-win relationships with its suppliers. And it’s one strength among many that have enabled the company to successfully avoid becoming a family-business horror story.
   One other crucial ingredient in the company’s success is simply this: The principals—the Koplin brothers and Henry Oliner—like what they do and are dedicated to their company and the industry.
   Speaking for all of them, Henry Koplin states, “None of us here has a problem sleeping at night. When we go home, we’re tired. We’ve had a full day. Some people ask why we work so much? Well, the business doesn’t run itself. I don’t have a corporate office running this operation. The four of us run this place, and we’re committed to it. That’s why, if we have to work late, come in on a Saturday, or have a board meeting on a Sunday, we don’t care, it’s part of it—it’s what we do.” •