1 Spring 2012
nuts & bolts
a quarterly newsletter for the employees of Tennsco Corp.
Volume 16 issue 2 Spring 2012
Tennsco at 50
See TENNSCO AT 50, page 2
Part 1 of a series
W
hen one takes a look back at the 50 years Tennsco has
been in business, some things haven’t changed. Metal
still comes in through bay delivery doors. It gets
formed into storage cabinets, lockers, work benches and shelving
before being painted, boxed and shipped out.
What has changed tremendously is the number of people
involved in the process, how the metal gets changed into product
and how many times a day the above process gets replicated.
To a person, Tennsco long-timers point out that anyone who
had a Rip Van Winkle-like experience of seeing the Tennsco of
1962 and the Tennsco of 2012 wouldn’t recognize the place.
“When I sit back and think, I used to take the orders home
and lay them out in the floor by truck route,” said
Vice President of Manufacturing/Plant 1 Manager
Jerry Estes. “Now the computer does it. It’s so
advanced it’s unbelieveable.”
Stopping to think of other things younger
employees wouldn’t believe, Estes said “there
were no calculators!”, but then struggled to
think of the contraption’s name the staff used
to add up several long numbers. “It made a
noise…brrrrech, brrrrech. I guess I’ll have to
look it up in a prehistoric book!”
But not this day. Estes was too busy. In
fact, his brain was moving so fast he
had to really think how long he’d
worked at Tennsco. For the record, it’s
44 years...the same as two other long-
timers: Vice Presidnet for Manufactur-
ing/Plant 2 Manager Roy Stinson and
Vice President of Purchasing Phyllis
Jones. They all started together.
Estes got a job in Tennsco’s office
two weeks after getting out of Vietnam and the U.S. Army. “I did
anything they needed done in the office, from costing and
scheduling to routing trucks and purchasing…Nothing’s done
like we used to,” Estes said.
Estes said the biggest change has been the size of the
operation and all the technological advances…the conversion
from liquid paint to powder paint, more modern controlled
machines (product is produced by one and two processes on one
machine as opposed to moving that product from one machine to
the next).
Football on Sundays
Stinson said early on there wasn’t a big sales staff or engineer-
ing staff. All the staff members pitched in on all the jobs. “We’d
help man the booth at (trade) shows,” Stinson said.
“That was interesting.”
Back when he joined Tennsco, there were only
about 50 employees. “Everything was done by
hand. There was no progressive tooling. It was
small scale, very labor intensive. Even the
appearance of the place has changed…we had
a front dock and a miniature football field
there. On Sundays we’d play. I’ve gotten hurt
pretty good at times. We thought we were
young,” he said with a laugh.
Roy Stinson had an unplanned route to
Tennsco. He was enrolled in the automotive
mechanics at the Dickson Area Vocational
Technical School (now the Tennes-
see Technology Center at Dickson)
when the instructor died. Adminis-
trators moved the auto students to
welding class, electronics and
drafting.
Les Speyer 1920 - 2012
Spring 2012 2
nuts & bolts
A picture from the “old days” (L to R) showing Chuck Lazareth, Les Speyer, Jim Patrick, Paul “Bud”
Liebtag and Jim Hill. The woman in front is unidentified.
“I got the basics of them all. I graduated
from automotive with no intention of being a
mechanic,” he said. He joined Tennsco
using the skills he picked up by chance.
“I use those skills to this day,” he said. In
his 44 years with Tennsco, Stinson has
moved through the ranks: pressman, utility
man, lead man, foreman and general fore-
man. When Tennsco bought the Winner
Boats manufacturing plant in 1980, Stinson
was made plant manager, now overseeing
the work of hundreds at Tennsco’s Plant 2.
Stinson said it took about a year to get
everything built and installed at Plant 2. He
said the firm went from making welded
cabinets with a delivery time of 12-16 weeks
producing 40 to 50 cabinets a day to
producing hundreds a day.
Stinson remembers traveling the country,
with founder Les Speyer in the cockpit of
his airplane, buying equipment in places like Pennsylvania and
Massachusetts.
Stinson kind of identified with Speyer. “I’m kind of a hands-on
guy with a big interest in shipping. If you can’t get the product
out the door...” he said, then the customer is let down.
Speyer started out hands-on. Stinson said he’d always heard
the stories of Speyer making folding tables in his Chicago home
garage. As the operation grew, “he would just replace himself,”
Stinson said, and hire folks to help with the work.
Only one job in a life
Phyllis Jones hasn’t created a resume in nearly half a century.
Tennsco is the one and only place she’s ever worked.
“This was my first and only job,” Jones said. “I took typing in
school, came to Tennsco and started typing orders.
“We were a very small company. All different ages. There were
probably 10 people when we started in the old house (a former
residence on Scott Street). I started out in the living room and got
promoted to the kitchen. I was in there with Jerry (Estes) helping
with cost estimating of products.”
Jones said Tennsco has grown to the point “I don’t even
know everybody’s name. And we started out making a few
products. Now, there’s no telling how many we have.”
As the vice president for purchasing, Jones buys all the steel
that goes into Tennsco products and she’s involved in schedul-
ing - mostly for Plant 1. At this point she’s still doing that
manually.
“I think the computer has created greater paper piles,” Jones
said. “It could be I’m printing too many reports. When you grow
up with paper, it’s hard to let go.”
Raising Dorothy
But Estes, Stinson and Jones
don’t hold the longevity record.
That belongs to Dorothy Leegon.
She was 19 years old when she
went to work for Speyer four years
after he founded Tennsco.
She started as the receptionist.
She thinks there were about 10
folks working in the office…if you
could call it that. She worked in the
kitchen. Hearing Leegon talk about
her early days you realize her early
office equipment is now in
museums…a manual typerwriter, a rotary dial phone (she thinks it
had two lines).
“I always told that Mr. (Les) Speyer and Joe Youree (retired
Executive Vice President) and Tennsco raised me,” said the
grandmother of five. “They were like a second family and still are
today.”
One of her chief duties early on was a hand-typed report of
daily shipments. It was about a page. That wasn’t enough typing
to keep her warm in the house that was Tennsco’s first office. “It
was always cold,” she said with a chuckle. “That’s one of the
things I really remember.”
The early years
Dickson Realtor Jim Hill predated Dorothy Leegon’s tenure at
Tennsco. Hill was Tennsco’s assistant sales manager then sales
manager for almost four years from 1965 to 1969.
Dorothy Leegon
Tennsco at 50
Continued from page 1
3 Spring 2012
nuts & bolts
“We used to say it was on the corner of Broad and Dull
(streets),” Hill said with a chuckle.
Hill had his own circuitous route to get to Tennsco. He was a
hometown boy raised in White Bluff. Like legions of other
Southerners, he’d gone to Detroit to work in an automotive plant.
He read about a boat company in Dickson so he decided to visit
the boat show when it came to Detroit. Hill met the owner of
Dickson’s Winner Boats, Peter Lufkin, who invited him to return
home and work in boat production. Hill moved back to Dickson
and became an assembly line foreman in the buildings that are
now Tennsco Plants 2 and 3. Joe Youree moved in next door and
became Hill’s neighbor on Pond Lane.
Tennsco sold mostly in Tennessee border states and east of
the Mississippi. At that point, the company had just two or three
salesmen and used manufacturers’ reps as salesmen. Hill could
still rattle off a geographic listing of lower Mississippi towns from
having traveled that territory frequently.
Catalogs weren’t quite the production back then. “We would
make up our new catalog every year. It wasn’t a big catalog –
maybe 10-12 pages,” he said.
The firm used an advertising agency from Speyer’s former
home in Chicago. It’s also where Speyer got his start in business
with Midwest Folding Products – a
folding table production company. Hill
noted that the work ethic that was
evident among Tennsco employees
was evident at Midwest, too. At some
point there was a fire in the plant there.
The employees came together and built
the plant back because it was so
important to them, Hill said.
Hill’s memories go back to Les
Speyer’s dad, Al Speyer. “I can still see
him (Al Speyer) with his hat, black
overcoat and Cadillac. He liked to
demonstrate how tough the folding
tables were.”
Midwest Folding Products had a
touching beginning.
Les Speyer had requested that a part of his military salary be
sent back to assist his mother during the war. “Things were tight
back home, said Tennsco President Stuart Speyer, “and my dad
wanted to help provide.”
Instead of spending the money, Les’ mom saved it all. It
amounted to about $25,000 which was his seed money for
Midwest. Les made the folding tables in his garage and sold them
out of his station wagon.
Lockers a big product line
Shelving was Tennsco’s big product then – plain metal
shelving, Hill said, as well as six feet tall storage cabinets. A lot of
what was shipped out had to be assembled. Then the company
grew into filing cabinets. Hill was on board when Tennsco
introduced a lateral filing cabinet in about 1965 or 1966.
Then came lockers. “That was a big one,” Hill said. “Metal
lockers. We sold a lot to schools.” He went on rattling off new
products that came on line: metal service desks, tool carts,
automotive parts bins and eventually slotted angle shelving.
There was plenty of travel and entertaining with Hill’s job. He
remembered trade shows in Atlantic City, Chicago and New York
– some with 25,000 to 30,000 attendees.
Hill also remembers the Tennsco office getting cramped as the
company grew. “I think four folks shared the dining room. I
thought I’d like more privacy. The house had a front porch. I
thought we could close in the side walls. I suggested that and got
it done and I got my private office. It was on the front porch.”
“We had some good people out there,” he said of Tennsco. “It
was kinda fun being there…seeing it grow.”
Tennsco got its start in Dickson when Les Speyer bought the
former KF Kline plant on Broad Street. The company produced
bank vaults as a subsidiary of Diebold. That’s how Joe Youree
came to be a part of Tennsco.
Move to Dickson
Youree was working for KF Kline when it bankrupted and
closed in the fall of 1961. Speyer bought the plant and Tennsco
was born on Jan. 2, 1962.
Youree was one of 12 employees
Kline employees that Speyer hired.
Youree was the only one who lasted. “It
was kinda nervewracking, but he and I
developed a great respect for each
other and he was wonderful,” Youree
said.
He said Speyer gave $100,000 for all
of Kline’s equipment and the company.
He got a 10-year lease on the building.
Youree said Speyer’s father and sister
were working for him.
“It’s uncommon to have the
motivation Mr. Speyer had. He had a
very inquisitive mind. He went to all
sorts of seminars, and driving back and
forth from Nashville he had books on
tape. He kept improving himself,” Youree said.
It was tough in the early years, Youree said.
“We weren’t making any money and trying to get our volume
up. We knew volume was what we had to have. He (Speyer) just
stayed with it and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Once Tennsco automated some of its processes with mechani-
cal slitters, shearers and roll fomers “then it got competitive.”
Speyer bought more production buildings (the total is now six)
and expanded all of them, adding hundreds of employees over the
years. Youree grew with the company. He started out as the
bookkeeper and retired as the executive vice president, second in
command to Speyer. He retired in 1996 after 34 years.
Youree’s greatest joy was to be a part of a struggling, money-
losing company that grew into the most successful company in
town.
COMING NEXT ISSUE: The factors that led to Tennsco’s
success over the last 50 years.
Memorial Service
Tennsco President Stuart Speyer has
invited employees, friends and family
members to join him at a memorial
service to celebrate the life of his late
father, Les Speyer.
Two public memorials have been
announced - one in Dickson at 1 p.m.
Sunday, June 24, at the Tennsco
Community Center and a second in
Nashville at 7 p.m. that same day at
Hillwood Country Club.
Spring 2012 4
nuts & bolts
Extreme
couponing
defined
Coupon Queen
E
nter “extreme couponing” into an internet
search field and it yields 11.8 million results
in just seconds.
Talk to Pat Law, and she will tell you how
she’s saved hundreds of dollars over just a few
short months.
Web sites, cable shows, blogs and YouTube
videos touting the benefits of extreme
couponing clog the virtual highway.
All that’s clogged at Law’s house is her
coupon binder and a couple of storage cabinets.
Law, who runs Tennsco’s print shop, accepts
coupons from co-workers and spends most
every lunch hour sorting, cutting and filing in
her three-ring binder of baseball card holder
sheets. She watches store advertisements for
sales, buy-one-get-one-free offers and other
deals and many times purchases at one store
that offers to match ads from other stores.
In the five to six months she’s been
couponing, Law has stocked her house with
enough dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent
(“I haven’t bought detergent in eight months!”
she said), paper towels, body wash, toothpaste,
shampoo, deodorant and plenty of other
Pat Law saves money, donates to area charities with savings
household and personal items that she wouldn’t
have to go to the store for a year or more.
A big part of Law’s efforts go to stock
donation boxes with items that she got very
cheaply or free. She regularly donates boxes of
food and personal items to the Dickson County
Help Center, the Humane Society of Dickson
County and the no-kill animal shelter in
Williamson County.
“I stock up on non-perishable stuff for us. I
also have extra things. When it costs me literally
nothing, I put it in a box and donate it,” Law
said. She’s giving a box of goods to the Help
Center every one to three months. Recently, she
donated 10 bags of dog food and several cat
treats to the animal shelter. “At least I know
they’re fed,” she said.
“There’s deodorant. I put them in my box.
What I get free I throw in a box. Feminine
products…89 cents a box…I use a coupon for
$1.25 (she got them free with even the tax paid). I
donated more than 60 boxes of feminine pads to
the Help Center,” she said. “I can’t give a lot out
of my paycheck. I can give back something that
cost me a little tax. It makes me feel good about it
Pat Law poses with some of goods she’s bought inexpensively with coupons
Extreme couponing
is an activity that
combines shopping
skills with couponing
in an attempt to save
as much money as
possible while
accumulating the
most groceries.
The
concept of “extreme
couponers” was first
mentioned by The
Wall Street Journal
on March 8, 2010, in
an article entitled
“Hard Times Turn
Coupon Clipping Into
the Newest Extreme
Sport”. On March 25,
2010, ABC Nightline
followed up with its
Season 3 premiere
with a segment
entitled “Extreme
Couponing Competi-
tion: How Far Can
$50 Go?”
TLC’s Extreme
Couponing is a show
about shoppers who
make extensive and
focused use of
coupons to save
money while accu-
mulating large
quantities of goods. It
was previewed in
December 2010; after
surpassing network
expectations with
more than 2 million
viewers, it received a
series order
and
began regular airings
in April 2011
- From Wikipedia, the Free
Encyclopedia , 4.27.12
5 Spring 2012
nuts & bolts
“Start small and
work up. It takes
time and
patience, but the
reward is so
great.”
1. Always be
organized
2. Get coupons
from your local
paper,family and
friends and
online.
3. Check all ads
and compare
prices,
4. Make your
shopping list and
have your
coupons
matched up with
your products.
5. Check online
sites for extra
savings like
thekrazycouponlady.
com, and
Southernsavers.com.
Pat
Law’s
Top 5
Couponing
Tips
because I feel like I’m doing the right thing.”
A friend got Law started with couponing, and
“I always watched it on TV – Extreme
Couponing,” she said.
“My friend did it. I started when I found out
the bargains she got. So now I have everyone
here at work save their coupons out of Friday
and Sunday papers.
“They laugh at me,” she said. “At lunchtime,
I’ll put all the coupons together. Then clip them.
I have a huge binder.”
Law kept emphasizing: “It’s a lot of work. A
lot of work, but it’s fun. It really is. Now I do the
couponing part. He (husband Perry) does much
of the going-to-the-store part.”
Later she admitted she does some of the
shopping. She’s even in a giving mode at the
store. She always carries a roll of tape and
scissors with her. If she has a coupon about to
expire, she tapes it to the product on the shelf
leaving it behind for others to use.
The mother and grandmother said “in this
day and time, you have to do everything you
can to save.”
Many people don’t understand, Law said,
that you can get an advertisement from Publix,
take it to Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart will match the
offer.
“It’s a long process. It’s hard when you start,
but once you get a system going it pays off at
the end.”
She doesn’t make the donations for the tax
break. “I’m doing it because it’s the right thing
to do,” and if she can get something for free and
the Help Center use it that’s all the better.
“It’s really neat when you can do something
to save money and you can help others at the
same time. It’s a good feeling.”
“Why not give back? A lot of people really
need those items. It’s really fun. It makes you
feel good that you can take care of your family
and other families.
Law focuses on two internet sites:
www.southernsavers.com (which gives her a
heads up about what coupon inserts will be in
the Sunday Tennessean) and
www.krazycouponlady.com. At home each day,
she spends about 45 minutes of early morning
quiet time scouring these two sites and emails
she receives from stores. She watches sale
papers. Sometimes she coupons at night after
work. “You can do it in the middle of the night at
3 a.m. when you can’t sleep. You’re not making
noise. You’re doing something productive.”
When she or her husband shops, they take
the three-ring binder to the grocery. The baseball
card sheets are color coded and categorized.
In addition to coupons, the binder contains
each store’s policy on coupons and special
deals. At the store, you have to be good at
picking the person to check you out. “You can
tell whether this is a good person. Others just
look at you like: can you hurry up and get
through my line?” Law said.
Law’s biggest single deal?
Cases of Scott paper towels are usually $7.99
an eight-pack, she said. They were on sale for
$4.99 at store #1, then store #2 had them for
$3.99. Store #1 matched the lower price and Law
had a dollar off coupon. She had multiple
coupons so she was able to make multiple
purchases.
Monday lunchtime ritual: sorting coupons brought in by
co-workers
The color-coded, tabbed coupon binder
Spring 2012 6
nuts & bolts
NO. OF
PLANT NAME MONTH YRS
1 Bobby Griffin 6/82 30
2 Albert Martin 3/07 5
2 Steven Wright 3/07 5
2 Robert Haynes 3/07 5
2 Matthew Ryniker Green 4/07 5
2 Adam Sullivan 5/07 5
2 Natalie Boone 6/07 5
2 Jeffrey Bell 6/07 5
2 Michael Diviney 4/02 10
2 Robin Slaughter 5/02 10
2 Samuel Lovelday 1/97 15
January - June 2012
E
MPLOYEE ANNIVERSARIES This
listing of employee anniversaries includes
those celebrating a five-year interval.
Employees
get rewards
The following
employees received
an extra $75
attendance bonus.
1st Quarter
Plant 1
Gary Cable
Larry Costa
James Cotton
Bobby Griffin
Ricky Parchment
Jimmie Ross
Noah Weatherford
Plant 2
Crystal Boone
Sandra Cotton
Johnny Halliburton
Mark Jackson
Albert Primm
Plant 3
Shannon Donegan
Plant 5
Richard Atkinson
Kenneth Greene
David Jones
Frank Joseph
Plant 6
Wesley Cochran
2 Michael Russell 1/97 15
2 Gregory Tummins 3/97 15
2 Frank Mims 4/97 15
2 Dwight Smith 6/92 20
2 Donald Dugan 4/87 25
2 Dennie Boren 3/82 30
2 Anthony Byrum 5/77 35
3 Ivan Turner 6/02 10
4 Thomas Buttrey 1/92 20
5 Mike Baumgarten 6/02 10
5 Kenneth Greene 1/87 25
Office
Brooks Franceschini 5/02 10
Office Michael Easley 2/97 15
Office Michael Chapman 1/92 20
Office David Kelley 1/92 20
NO. OF
PLANT NAME MONTH YRS
Families
celebrate
births
Rylie Ralyn Cochran
Born 4-24-12
6 lb 14 oz
Daughter of Wesley
and Jessica
Cochran
NEW EMPLOYEES Tennsco’s Tool and Die department said goodbye to Gerald Wayne
Lomax in March. Lomax retired after 14 years with the company. Pictured (above, L to R) are
Charlie Warfield, Lomax and Bob Brake.
7 Spring 2012
nuts & bolts
T
ennsco’s charitable giving has built sports
facilities in Dickson and Nashville, sup-
ported local high schoolers’ college endeavors,
boosted the United Way with fundraising and
libraries with donated shelving.
When Tennsco leaders learned through a
local Rotary club presentation that students in
Guatemala were having to give up their educa-
tion after the sixth grade, Tennsco stepped in to
help beyond the nation’s borders.
High Noon Rotary Past President Jim Sowell
has been a part of Volunteers in Mission trips to
Guatemala since 2001. Mission teams have built
churches, schools and clinics, given away
eyeglasses and helped bring fresh water to
communities among other things. “Each year, it
seems we find other things to do,” he said.
Four to five years ago, Sowell said the
mission team discovered that the first six grades
of school were mandatory for Guatemalan
children. After that, “they go to school if they
want to and if they can,” Sowell said.
“It’s a little more expensive to go to what we
would call junior high school – grades 7, 8 and 9
– but what they call secondary school. They
have to provide their own transportation,”
Sowell said. If they don’t stay enrolled in
school, the boys go to work in the sugar cane
fields, which the Rotarian called “hot, hard, low-
paying work.”
The girls? “Not long after finishing the sixth
grade they get pregnant. It’s a dismal future,”
Sowell said. “A little bit of education means a
whole lot to them.”
Sowell reported on his most recent mission at
a recent Rotary meeting attended by several
Tennsco employees. Sowell had visited the la
Toma community near the city of Mazatenango
in the department or state of Suchitepéquez in
Guatemala.
The next day a Tennsco representative called
and offered to put $2,000 into a scholarship
program. Tennsco’s donation will fund four
students at $435 each. Tennsco’s donation was
joined with other local area donations to fund
about 70 total students. The local initiative is
part of a greater effort involving groups all over
the country
Sowell said the students must apply for the
scholarship and a member of the local mission
team interviews and chooses the recipients.
The money buys uniforms, books and
supplies, pays for a public bus to and from
school and provides some family assistance
because these children would otherwise be
working.
“We’re seeing some good results,” after
about five years with the program, Sowell said.
“We have some to fall out for different reasons,
but a large percentage of them - 85 to 90 percent
- go on and finish the ninth grade. They can go
on to grades 10, 11 and 12 but they call that
college.” Above the college level it’s called
university.
Sowell thanked Tennsco for its support.
“Meeting these kids is a real blessing. It’s
really good,” Sowell said. “Occasionally, we’re
able to visit in their homes. Some of the homes
are cardboard shacks with dirt floors. There’s
plenty of needs.”
Guatemalan children earn education
with Tennsco scholarships
NEW EMPLOYEES Tennsco has welcomed back a
former employee: Sandra Vineyard (pictured above, left).
Vineyard rejoined the Customer Service staff. She had
previously worked for Tennsco from 1996 to 2004. Steven
Moran (above right) started on Plant 5’s paint line in 2002.
Now he’s moved into the main office’s engineering department
to work on the Estey division.
Spring 2012 8
nuts & bolts
Tennsco Corp.
201 Tennsco Drive,
Dickson, TN 37056-1888
615/446-8000
Stuart Speyer ........................... President
Phil Corbin ......... Vice President, Human
Resources
Gary Fouts ...................... Editor, gf grafix
Wellness fair challenge
W
ith the Spring wellness fair, Tennsco put a challenge before its
employees: between April 1 and Oct. 31, improve your Body Mass
Index (BMI) and win some prizes. The goal is to encourage all employees
and employee spouses who are on the Tennsco health insurance plan to
move toward a healthy BMI range of 19 to 24.
Vice President for Human Resources Phil Corbin said the program was
designed with families’ “overall health and well-being in mind.”
Participants must attend both the spring and fall wellness fairs to get an
accurate BMI reading.
All BMI information will be kept confidential. Those who meet their
challenge goal will receive a $50 gift card from Hibbett’s and be entered into
a grand prize drawing for a bicycle, a one-year gym membership or a
treadmill.
The
Details
Below 19 BMI
gain to a healthy
range (19-24)
BMI 19-24
Maintain weight (3
lb. fluctuation
allowed)
BMI 25
Lose 1 point of BMI
BMI 26-30
Lose 2 points of
BMI
BMI 31 or
greater
Lose 3 points of
BMI
A total of 356 employees and spouses attended the Spring wellness fair. Of
those, 80 signed up for the healthy BMI challenge. Pictured (from top,
clockwise) are Megan Rainey as she weighs in with the Dickson Medical
Associates staff; Jeff Bell sits still for a blood pressure check; Kim Morris gets a
grip and checks her strength; Terry Dreaden and Derrick Weaver waiting to talk
to the doctor.
