Sunbelt-Turret flourishes after owner Wayne Gould allows the acquired company to focus on its specialty—cutting large-diameter rounds.

By Myra Pinkham,
Managing Editor

• Quick Facts
  

When Turret Steel executive Wayne Gould acquired Sunbelt Steel in 1998, he envisioned turning it into Turret South—a southern branch very much like Turret’s other operations in the Midwest and Northeast. What he eventually realized is that he needed to allow Sunbelt to be unique, and continue to do what it does best.

Today the company is a specialist in the sawing of large-diameter forged rounds and, with Turret’s backing, has attracted new customers from across the country.

While both were distributors of carbon and alloy bar products, Turret and Sunbelt went to market in very different ways. Where Turret stocked a large quantity of bar in a wide range of diameters from one-half to 10 inches, Sunbelt carried a limited inventory and specialized in the processing of material up to 26 inches in diameter.

“Our original thought was to use Sunbelt to expand Turret’s presence in Turret’s traditional markets in the Southeast,” Gould says. The idea had particular appeal because the growing automotive presence in the region dovetailed with one of Turret’s strongest markets. The Leetsdale, Pa.-based Turret had a strong Midwest presence with locations in Chicago; Warren, Ohio; and the Pittsburgh area, but no foothold in the Southeast.

For the first few years of the newly created Sunbelt-Turret Steel, Gould and his management team tried to remake Sunbelt in Turret’s image. The results were disappointing.

“The first couple years after we bought Sunbelt, we tried to impose our will and our way of doing things,” says Gould, now the president and CEO of Sunbelt-Turret. “The company was OK, but it wasn’t the homerun we thought it would be.”

Ultimately, Gould and fellow executives realized that they were approaching the melding of the two companies from the wrong direction. “Maybe it was a little egotistical on our part, thinking that whatever they did, we could do better our way,” Gould recalls. “We eventually realized that instead of trying to impose our will, we could learn from them.”

What Sunbelt did exceedingly well was cut large-diameter forged rounds.

So, after treading through the early years of the acquisition, Gould decided to let Sunbelt-Turret return to its specialty—sawing. Leveraging Turret’s buying power, Gould beefed up the inventory at Sunbelt—both in volume and in diameters. The company stocks from between half-inch up to 26-inch bar, though its focus is on the larger diameters.

“We built on Sunbelt’s ability for processing the slice-and-dice business and made the commitment to a larger inventory,” Gould says. “We found we could hit our traditional markets in the Southeast better with Turret people in our other locations.”

The commitment to inventory called for a move to a larger facility. Sunbelt-Turret relocated from its original 20,000-square-foot warehouse to a new 110,000-square-foot processing center in Charlotte, N.C. The added space not only made room for steel, but for saws as well.

At the time of Gould’s acquisition, Sunbelt-Turret had four saws, two prized Behringers and two older foreign models that had seen better days. Its saw arsenal now totals 10, populated largely by more Behringers, plus a HE&M saw.

“We always keep our eyes open for a good used Behringer,” Gould says. “The Behringer and the HE&M, those have become our workhorses. We’ve had great success with them.”

Sunbelt-Turret’s most recent addition was its first computerized saw. “We are continuing to add to our cutting capacity with newer, automatic, computerized saws,” Gould says. “We think we are at the apex of cutting ability in the Southeast. If there’s somebody who can cut more and bigger, we don’t know about them.”

Along with its returned focus on cutting large-diameter rounds, Sunbelt-Turret has expanded its reach beyond the region. The company had done most of its business within 200 miles of Charlotte, but now claims customers in all 50 states. Many of those customers are other service centers.

“It’s not unusual for us to get a call from the Northeast and even the Far West, where that would have been unheard of before. If a service center gets a call for four 3-inch pieces of 22-inch round, they don’t have to buy the full bar from a mill,” Gould says. “They can call us.”

General Manager Jerry Webb, who was with Sunbelt before the sale, says Turret’s position as a national player helped the new Sunbelt take off. Turret gave Sunbelt additional visibility in the market, plus valuable buying clout. Sunbelt-Turret can now buy steel at much more competitive prices than before, he says.

Though its name and market have grown substantially, both Gould and Webb say Sunbelt-Turret remains committed to personalized service. While it has some contract customers, much of its business comes from spot orders.

“Every order is a special order,” Gould says. “We don’t have the kind of business where we cut 100 pieces of 12-inch round and have it there every other Tuesday. A machine shop gets a job, they figure out what they need and call us.”

The company recognizes the urgency behind such orders and turns them around quickly. “What we try to do, from the time we receive an order, is have everything out the doors either the same day or no later than the next day,” Webb says. “We’ll do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. If it means working on the weekend, we’ll work on the weekend.”

While the Charlotte company is part of the Turret family of steel companies, Gould says the creation of Sunbelt-Turret differed from typical acquisitions. Gould, not Turret, purchased the company.

“Sunbelt-Turret is not operating as a division (of Turret). It’s a cousin more than a brother. We share some of the support services, but the inventory is independent. The sales force is independent.”

Sunbelt marks its 20th birthday this month. It was founded by three partners, Robert Cale, Joe Chupko and John Klein, as a distributor of carbon and alloy rounds serving the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. At the time of its founding, most distributors in the South were dealing in full bars.

“To get into cutting for end-users and supplying them a cut product instead of requiring them to buy full bars and cut it themselves was innovative,” says Webb. “Now everybody’s doing it.”

Being at the forefront of the shift in U.S. manufacturing to the Southeast was more than a fortuitous stroke, Webb says. “John had been in the steel business for a number of years. He saw the need upfront. It proved to be 100 percent correct.”

The company’s performance clearly bears out Klein’s vision. Sunbelt-Turret has quadrupled its business in the past four years, and Webb envisions similar growth going forward.

“We’re committed to adding saws to our operation. Our customer base is growing daily, and we continue to add salespeople inside,” he says. “So we see nothing but growth ahead of us, unless the entire market would just bottom out, which we don’t anticipate.”