Chapter 47

Monday morning showed the excitement that the crew had for going to work. Everyone was smiling and talking about a new day and everything that was going to be happening.

Tiny said that some big shots from Onan were coming in, so I might want to come into the shop to meet with them. He said they were leasing the Gulfstream to get here, so we needed to be appreciative of the charter business anyway. He was laughing.

Before everyone took off for their workplaces, Debbie said she wanted to talk to me for a few minutes this morning before she went in. She told Deanne that she would be in shortly and to get started without her.

Debbie began, "I want to thank you for your confidence in me taking over the supervision of the welding and sheet metal shops. I still work with the utility body guys and have to make sure the orders are staged for the motor department. You've entrusted a lot of responsibility with me. Thank you."

"You've done a great job, Debbie. You're deserving of the praise."

"I may have trouble doing everything for a while," she said and wouldn't look me in the eye. "I'm pregnant."

"That's great, Debbie. I'm happy to hear it," I said smiling remembering the conversation from last night.

Debbie's head snapped up and she looked at me with her mouth open, "You're not mad? It's okay to be pregnant?"

"Why would I be mad, Debbie? Being pregnant is great. You'll have two little ones running around. How does Hank feel about it?"

"He loves the idea of being a dad again, but I thought you would be mad because it's going to cause me to miss some work."

"Let's see, Deb. When you had Robert, you missed some work and everyone made it. Deanne had her little boy and we lived through it. Babies aren't an inconvenience, they are a blessing. Be happy about it, I am. I can't wait to hold your new one in my arms to tell it how wonderful its mother is."

Debbie got up, came around the table and hugged me. "Thank you for being yourself, Steve. You've made me so very happy. Now I can look forward to being a mommy again."

Mercy had heard the exclamation and came up to Deb and whispered in her ear. Debbie brought her head up exclaiming, "No, not three, you?"

Mercy smirked and nodded patting her tummy. Debbie said, "Thank God I think this is only one. That's enough for me. One at a time."

Debbie left for work and I went in to change into some presentable clothes. Sue told me to wear jeans and a company T-shirt. That was what my people liked to see me in, so that's what I put on, along with some boots.

Before going to the shop, I toured the truck and RV store and walked over to the cart store and plant. There were four of the new police carts in the show room probably waiting to get a commitment from the city to test them. I wondered if Abe had the engines that he was talking about in progress.

To answer that, I went to the new R&D building to see what was going on in there. The one area was working on three different types of small motors. They had them bolted into a bare frame with no front, sides, or seat. They would start them, and then run them around outside using a kids remote control car hand held unit. They had one of the units, with the engine enclosed, idling outside the doors to the shop, testing to see how it did at idle for long periods of time.

In another shop, I found Jeff working with some people who were mixing fiberglass with other materials. Jeff was trying to come up with a superior blend of synthetic molding for the truck bodies and carts. He said he had four more blends he wanted to try before he would do some tests.

I drove to the shop and went through the various work areas to see everyone, and to see what was going on. I did the picking up of a piece for one person, holding something in place for another, and handing a screwdriver to Roberta in the motor shop. The superlift shop was really backed up. There looked to be forty big lifts waiting to be rebuilt. When I checked their progress board, it was evident that they were putting out product as fast as could be expected. It was amazing that we had that much business.

Back upstairs, I got a cup of coffee and visited with the customer service people. Judy introduced me to dozens of new people that were working the phones.

Phil had a bunch of papers on his desk, with a far away look on his face. "What's going on, Phil?" I asked.

"I'm trying to get straight how to propose to Onan that they expand their superlift manufacturing. Right now we've sold out their production through June of next year, and we have several orders pending that would equal what we've sold to date. We would be almost two years away from delivery. Onan and Caterpillar are partners in the superlift business, so we really need to be talking to both companies at once. Caterpillar wants to take over the whole thing, but Onan feels it deserves some of the business, as they were the ones that began the manufacturing in the first place. As you can see, it is a problem."

"How about getting the Cat people on the phone while the Onan folks are here so we can have a conference call? We'll do it in my office with that spider looking phone in there."

Tiny came in and said, "Our guests have arrived. Do you want to come with us as we tour the building?"

"Sure," I said to Tiny. I turned to Phil, "Get your stuff together so we can present it to them properly. If this doesn't work out with Cat, I have an idea."

Tiny and I greeted the contingent of folks from Onan and toured the facility. I asked them if they wished to see the utility body plant, or the T-shirt plant, but they declined. They did say they would like to see the business park they had heard so much about.

"Before we go up to the park, let's get down to some business that has the sales manager in a bind. Come into my office and we'll get you some coffee, Coke, or water."

As soon as we had them all seated around the table, Ruth, Debbie, Deanne, and Judy hustled some drinks for everyone. They placed a huge tray of cookies on the table and left.

"Phil, can you tell me again the story you told me earlier about the superlifts?"

When Phil finished his tale, the president of Onan said, "I knew we had a production problem, but I didn't know it was that big. What are you going to do with the orders you have?"

I answered quickly, before Phil could say anything, "It depends on what answers we get today."

"Why do you have to have Caterpillar involved for making the lifts?"

"We use some of their hydraulics and some of their steel manufacturing. They want to use their motors, but we have a good engine for the line of lifts we sell. They want to take over the product line completely, but I feel it's our product, we developed it, introduced it, and marketed it, so it should remain an Onan product."

While looking at the man, I said, "Why don't you develop your own hydraulics and expand your own steel manufacturing?"

"We've expanded so much in the last two years that I'm afraid to keep building a bigger and bigger plant. It's your orders that have done this, and I don't know whether the company can handle that type of growth in the near future."

"Is there something I'm missing? If you have orders that exceed your capacity to manufacture, you add to your manufacturing and increase your marketing in order to keep the new space productive. What can't you do? Is your margin so slim that you aren't making any money?"

The man was squirming now. "Our profits are great. This last quarter our profits are larger than ever before. Our orders are greater than they have ever been."

"Then you have to tell me why you won't expand to handle more orders. My sales manager has enough orders for your entire production for next year and you're saying you not only can't handle it, you don't want to handle it, and that you don't want anyone else to handle it. Are you having trouble borrowing for expansion? You have to tell me."

The man finally said, "We are a very conservative company, at least since I've taken over. I feel we shouldn't expand our production facilities to meet the orders we have in hand. We can fulfill them by next June. The other orders you have will probably have to be given up. We won't be able to fulfill them until after next year."

I sat heavily in a chair, leaning back, trying to come up with a way to get across to the guy.

"Can I buy the right to manufacture your product? I want to buy the superlift part of your company. I'll subcontract part of my production to you so you can keep that part of your production facility at full production. If you want, I'll even buy that entire facility from you. I want to produce these lifts in sufficient quantity to fulfill the orders we have, and the anticipated orders we will have."

His face was white. All the blood had drained from it. "I, ah, ah, ah, I, ah, the board would be the only people who could make a decision like that."

"Look, anyone can design a comparable lift and build it to compete with what you are selling right now. We wouldn't infringe on anyone's patents, and we could license any hydraulics necessary that we couldn't design ourselves. We've gone into manufacturing before, and we can do it again. You tell me, can you expand to meet our needs, do you sell me your production facilities, or do I go into competition with you. You decide. Tiny, Phil, and I are going to leave you for a few minutes. You all talk among yourselves and see if there is any way we can do this."

Out in the hallway, Phil said, "Christ, are you nuts. That's the new president of Onan you're talking to in there. We make a lot of money selling their products. We need them."

I held my hand up, "Phil, they need us even more than we need them. If we decided not to have anything to do with them, they would lose sixty to seventy-five percent of their sales. We're not irreplaceable, but we are very important to them. They are super-profitable because we do all of their marketing for them. If you remember, they wanted to buy us. Now it's the other way around. They now have a super-conservative head guy that doesn't want to make any changes. If he doesn't do anything, then he can't make a mistake."

I turned to Tiny, "How much Onan stock do we own, the total between the company, the 401K plan, and me. I've seen some of the statements, so I know it's a bunch."

"Let me have someone research that quickly. It's probably a pretty good amount though." Tiny walked up the hall to his office.

After taking a deep breath, I said "Let's go see what's up. We may want to take them to lunch soon so they can let off some steam."

When we went back into my big office, the president was standing at the windows, looking out at the production floor. He was red—faced, but returned to the table. "So where are we? How do I handle these orders for lifts?"

"You have me at a disadvantage. My predecessor gave away all of the marketing to you and to other distributors that sold out to you, so now all I have is the manufacturing. Granted, we don't have to spend money on marketing but if we lose your business, we would be out of business. Is it possible we can work together on this production problem?"

"I told you that I would do that. I will build a production facility to handle seventy-five percent of my orders. I will still submit orders in sufficient quantity to keep your production at maximum capacity. If we come up with a better idea, I expect you to incorporate it within your manufacturing, and I want you to separate yourself from Caterpillar. They are not good for your company."

The man was red-faced again, "But that would mean we would have to build a steel manufacturing facility to take up their slack."

I smiled, "Not to worry. I'll build a production facility that will be large enough to handle my increased orders and to sub to you guys. I want quality product coming out of your plant and my plant. I know I can do it from my plant, make sure yours is that way too."

The man stood, paced back and forth for a second, "Let's do it that way. I'll present it to the board next week."

Tiny came in with a piece of paper and handed it to me. I read it, then re-read it.

"Excuse me," I asked of the entire delegation. "How much stock would it take before a person could sit on the board?"

One of the other men answered, "My name is John Peters from accounting. You would need to own at least twenty-five percent of the common, or perhaps ten percent of the preferred, in order to demand a seat on the board."

I handed the paper back to Tiny pointing at the numbers on the bottom and said, "Get both. We'll go to lunch. You should have it by one right?"

Tiny rolled his eyes and left.

"How about a special place for lunch? There is a little Greek restaurant right around the corner that serves a great lunch. Come on, my treat."

We traversed to the Greek restaurant. When I walked in, leading a large contingent of people, the owner was instantly on us, directing us where to sit and getting tables together for us. I think we just turned a slow day into a good one.

He took everyone's orders and had a waitress hustling our drinks to us. While we were waiting, Tiny came in the door. I moved people around and got Tiny a seat. He handed me the paper as he sat down.

The paper said, "You, the company and the 401K plan now own twenty-six percent of the common and sixteen percent of the preferred. I applied for a seat on the board through the broker as well. I put both your name and mine on it."

I folded the note up and put it into my pocket, nodding and smiling at Tiny. Phil was acting nervous and I told him that his orders would be taken care of.

After lunch we took a tour of the business park. Before we left the park, I drove back to the rear and stopped. When we got out, I pointed to the bare land with the sporadic trees back there, "There are four hundred acres back here to build our new plant on. We won't need all of it, but we could build one hell of a big facility back here. We didn't need it all when we built the front. We still haven't used it all the way it could be. But back here, we can do anything we want."

We went back to the office, but this time I took them to the cafeteria to sit. We took up the back tables of the seating area. Standing in front of them I said, "I represent the stock owned by the company's 401K plan, the company's stock, and my personal stock. Combined, we own and control twenty-six percent of the total common stock of Onan. Combined, we own and control sixteen percent of the preferred stock. By the way, nice dividends this last quarter."

"I've applied for a position on your board because I feel you need someone to push you to make more money, and to become aggressive in both marketing, as well as production. So, can we get this show on the road or what?"

The accountant type guy said, "Do you really own that much stock? Both types?"

Tiny spoke up, "We didn't own all of it until I bought what else we needed before lunch. Now we own what's necessary."

The guy was shaking his head, "You are the largest stockholder of the company then. Are you going to take us over?"

"Why, you guys make a good product and make a profit. I just want you to make more products and to make more money."

The president said, "Do you want my resignation?"

"Not hardly, but I do want to teach you about quality manufacturing. You do a good job now, I want it to be even better. Can you stay through tomorrow?"