No Ordinary Country Boy

Alabama native Fred Berman reached the highest positions in scrap in his 48-year career, leaving a mark that lingers to this day.

By Si Wakesberg

Fred Berman has aged since his portrait appeared on the cover of Scrap Age magazine in February 1972, when he was elected president of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel (ISIS), but this soft-spoken Southerner retains the same traits that made him a charismatic scrap industry leader.
   Scrap veterans still vividly remember Berman’s presidency, which is sure to go down in scrap annals as an important administration (more on that later). Even now, 31 years later, Berman can’t help but recall that period of his career with nostalgia.
   There are, of course, many tales he could tell. “One time,” he says with a Southern storyteller’s flourish, “I was called to testify before a congressional committee. The day before the hearing, we worked until 2 a.m. preparing our case. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and our people were still talkin’ and yakkin’ and typin’ and writin’. So I finally said, ‘Fellers, tell ya what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna go to sleep, and when you’re finished here, bring the stuff to my hotel and slip it under the door. I’ll get up at 6 a.m., and by 9 a.m. I’ll be ready to testify. But if you keep me here any longer, I won’t be able to keep my head up. You gotta remember that I’m a country boy, used to early-to-bed and early-to-rise.’”
   As a born-and-bred Alabaman, Fred Berman can rightly consider himself a country boy, but he certainly wasn’t an ordinary one. He not only achieved the highest ranks within his family’s scrap business—Berman Brothers Iron & Metal Co. Inc. in Birmingham—but he also reached the highest office in his industry’s trade association, a position that required him to testify on Capitol Hill and hobnob with senators and congressmen. His administration helped usher in what was called “a new era of Washington involvement” for the association. What’s more, Berman happened to serve during a challenging time, and his leadership helped win victories for the scrap industry on such important issues as free trade.
   Here, Berman reflects on his 48-year career in the scrap industry and the changes he witnessed through the decades.

From War to Scrap
It was perhaps a foregone conclusion that Berman would have a career in the scrap industry. After all, his family owned and operated Berman Brothers (founded by his father Robert and uncle Sam in 1922), so he grew up hearing about the business and worked there during summers. 
   On Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan struck Pearl Harbor, Berman was attending the University of Alabama, pursuing studies in the business school. He enlisted in the reserve corps but remained in school until 1943 when he was called up for service as a private in the U.S. Army infantry. Following basic training, he attended officer training school at Fort Benning, Ga., graduating as a second lieutenant. He was assigned to B Company in the 345th Infantry Battalion of the 87th Infantry Division, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and was wounded in March 1945. He remained in the ser-vice, though, and didn’t return home until March 1946, by which time he was a captain with medals for good conduct as well as the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for valor.
   Berman’s father, who had worked himself sick operating the family business throughout the war, needed a vacation, so Fred’s transition from military service to scrap career was quick. “I got out one day and came to work the next,” he says. Since his Army uniform was his only clothing, he removed the insignias and bars to create an outfit consisting of a khaki shirt, khaki pants, and combat boots. “And with them,” he recounts, “I was ready for action in the scrap yard.”
   Berman began as a gofer, gradually progressing to purchasing, inspection, and supervisory positions. In the early 1950s, he became vice president of the company when his father was diagnosed with a malignancy in one of his legs. “I went from being one of the employees who didn’t have to worry about the financial end of the business to one who did, and that made a difference,” he recalls.
   In 1951, Berman Brothers branched out its operations by founding Bermco Aluminum, which began with a small sweat furnace but which grew to be “one of the largest independent aluminum ingot shippers in the Southeast,” Berman says proudly.
   Lighting off on another story, he recounts how Bermco Aluminum came by its name: When Berman Brothers began to produce aluminum ingots, Fred sent an employee out on the road to sell the ingots under the name of Berman Brothers Iron & Metal. The salesman came back and said that the factories he visited didn’t want to buy ingot from a scrap iron yard. In short, they were suspicious of the analysis. Obviously, the firm’s smelting operation needed a different name. Berman came up with Bermco—“and the name has stuck ever since.”
   In 1967, Berman became president of Berman Brothers and led the company in that capacity until 1986 when he assumed the role of chairman of the board, passing the president mantle to son-in-law Steve Weinstein. Berman continued to keep a hand in the business until around 1994 when he officially retired.

‘Exciting’ Association Days
As if leading his family’s scrap business weren’t enough, Berman also became heavily involved in association work. Looking back, he traces his involvement in ISIS to the persuasion of Alvin Koplin of Macon Iron & Paper Stock Co. Inc. (Macon, Ga.) and Herbert Luria III of Luria Brothers (Birmingham, Ala.), two scrap veterans whom Berman counts as big influences on his career.
   Berman’s association work included stints as president of ISIS’s Scrap Metal Research and Education Foundation and as vice chairman of four ISIS committees. He was also active in the Southeastern Chapter, which he eventually led as president from 1964 to 1966.
   In 1966, Berman began climbing the national officer ladder, helping the association deal with major issues such as Lady Bird Johnson’s famous Beautification Program, which sought to improve the appearance of industrial facilities (such as scrap yards) and address the problem of abandoned cars on U.S. roadways.
Through the late-1960s and into the 1970s, Berman continued his rise through the ISIS national leadership ranks, ascending from secretary to second vice president to first vice president to, ultimately, president from 1972 to 1974.
   “Those were exciting days,” he says, recalling fondly his working relationship with ISIS staff Herschel Cutler and Jim Fowler as well as scrap industry leaders such as Bernie Landau of M.S. Kaplan Co. (Chicago), Carl Friedes of Seaboard Metal & Salvage Corp. (Brooklyn, N.Y.), and others. “We all learned together, and it was stimulating,” Berman recounts. “I spent two to three days a week in Washington for a long period.”
   When Berman became ISIS president, ecology, recycling, and environmental issues in general were becoming high-profile topics, and he saw an opportunity to present the scrap industry as part of the environmental solution, not part of the problem. As Berman said in a 1972 interview, “Ecology, environment, these are the topics of today and people are beginning to realize that we are not polluters. Actually, we are the industry that’s helping to cure these things, not cause them. Without the scrap industry, the problem would be just that much more complex.”
   As the public and municipalities began to climb on the recycling bandwagon, Berman also saw the need to stress the importance of markets for collected materials. “We feel markets are the solution to the recycling concept,” he said in 1972. “If you have markets, then private industry will do the job. If you have markets, then it becomes profitable. Without markets, it is no good.”
   Other challenging issues during Berman’s administration included the inequities in transportation rates between scrap commodities and their virgin competitors; government moves to restrict scrap exports; and passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, with its significant ramifications for scrap operations. Berman also spearheaded the industry’s efforts to establish a government-supported incentive for consumers to use scrap rather than virgin raw materials.
   In addition, he recognized the need for the industry to be more aggressive at attracting a new generation of workers and leaders. “I don’t think we’re widely enough known for people to realize what I call the ‘romance of the scrap business,’” he said when he became president, suggesting that ISIS needed to “aim our programs, our convention format, and the subject matter to more current events, the type of things that young people are interested in.”
   When Berman completed his term as ISIS president at the association’s convention in 1974, the theme was “Speak and Be Heard”—a fitting summary of his efforts to promote the scrap industry’s voice wherever necessary.

Observing the Changes
Fred Berman certainly saw the scrap industry undergo dramatic changes throughout his career and after. Some of these changes included the emergence of minimills, which Berman refers to as “cold metal shops” due to their reliance on scrap (that is, cold metal) as a raw material.
  Other changes included the backward integration of some consumers into the scrap business as well as the shift of industry from North to South. As he notes, “You have many independent consumers down here as well as large concerns so that, in effect, the South has become a world market, both for export and import.”
   Berman also witnessed major developments in the handling and processing equipment used in scrap yards. When he entered the business, he recalls, “we used to rely on steam-driven locomotive cranes. I also remember the days when we used to load railcars with wheelbarrows.”
   Then came hydraulic cranes, the guillotine shear, then the automobile shredder, making scrap processing more efficient but also more capital-intensive. Today, Berman notes, scrap recyclers must spend millions on equipment if they want to process significant volumes.
   Such sizable investments, in fact, require processors to have access to and produce big tonnages to be profitable. In the South, he explains, there isn’t a huge supply of industrial scrap available, though the area does have lots of farm scrap and other types of obsolete material.
   Throughout the 1990s, Berman also observed—with some puzzlement—the consolidation trend in the scrap industry. Always outspoken, he states, “I’ve seen scrap yards sold for outrageous sums of money and yet, shortly thereafter, the consolidator or merger specialists filed for Chapter 11. Those who have managed to weather the storm of consolidation and still operate their own business are doing well, more so than those who are trying to pay off the bank with all the money they borrowed.”
   Berman still finds wisdom in a comment from the late Herman Moskowitz of Schiavone-Bonomo Corp. (Jersey City, N.J.)—also a past ISIS president—who once visited Birmingham and told a group of young scrap executives, “The business would be much better and more successful if you’d learn to say no.” That philosophy of just saying no could have saved many companies a lot of heartache and financial hassles, Berman says.
   As the scrap industry changed, its trade associations—ISIS and the National Association of Recycling Industries (NARI)—changed along with it. One fact that hasn’t changed over the years, says Berman, is the industry’s need for a strong association (now represented by ISRI). Among its many important functions, he explains, the association must disseminate useful information; represent and defend the industry’s interests at all levels of government; bring industry members together to network, carry on existing activities (such as specifications), and develop new programs; provide education and training opportunities; and more.

A Family Focus
Despite all of his career achievements, Berman’s true joy in his life is his family. He and wife Sylvia have been married for 59 years, and he often uses the word “together” when speaking of her. He’s also quick to mention their two daughters and four grandchildren (two boys and two girls), proudly pointing out that his oldest grandson works in the West Wing of the White House in the president’s scheduling office. Also, he adds, a granddaughter just graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont with a degree in economics. In addition, Berman has a 17-year-old grandson who is taller and bigger than he is and a 15-year-old granddaughter who can “make the entire family do most anything,” he says. Being with the entire family, Berman states, makes for his happiest moments.
   Aside from family, Berman used to enjoy playing golf and fishing, but he has had to give up those activities for medical reasons. He still plays gin, however, and likes to relax in Florida during the winter months at his home in Boca Raton. In Birmingham, the Bermans have just built a new house that Fred calls “our senior citizen home” because it’s equipped with facilities “for people of our age.”
   As he looks back at the age of 79, Berman reflects on some keys to personal and professional success. Personally, it’s important to have a sense of community, he states, which means working with charitable organizations, giving up time to help others, and in general doing some good (which he has done in spades throughout his life). Professionally, “you have to take the opportunities as they arise,” he says, “but you also have to be absolutely straight with everybody. Honesty in business is vital.”
   Perhaps the most fitting words to summarize Berman’s career are those he offered in a 1972 interview. “I think the scrap business is the greatest thing,” he said. “I don’t know what else I could do that I’d enjoy as much as I enjoy this. It’s an active business, you stay active all the time, you’re constantly being faced with new challenges, and you just can’t lose your interest.” 

Fred Facts
Born: March 2, 1924, in Birmingham, Ala.
Education: Studied two and a half years in the business school at the University of Alabama until being called up for service in World War II.
Military Service: Became a private in the U.S. Army infantry in 1943. Fought in the Battle of the Bulge as part of the rifle company of the 87th Infantry Division. Wounded in March 1945 but continued to serve in various posts in Europe until returning home in March 1946 as a captain. Received good-conduct medals as well as the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for valor.
Family: Married Sylvia Shiland in August 1944. Two daughters—Brenda and Jeri—and four grandchildren.
Career: Joined his family’s scrap business, Berman Brothers Iron & Metal Co. Inc., in 1946 when he was 22 and fresh out of the Army. Became vice president of the firm in the early 1950s and president in 1967. Assumed the role of chairman of the board in 1986 and retired in the mid-1990s.
Association Highlights: Served as president of ISIS’s Scrap Metal Research and Education Foundation; vice chairman of four ISIS committees; and president of the Southeastern Chapter. Beginning in 1966, he ascended through the national officer ranks, serving as president from 1972 to 1974.

Si Wakesberg is New York bureau chief for Scrap. •