One of the very few advantage’s that come with owning a company that’s nearly 100 years old are the inspiring stories handed down from years past.
I thought I would share one of ours with the hope that it gives inspiration to other business owners in these turbulent times.
Universal Engineering Inc. in Frankenmuth MI. was a tooling manufacturing company that supported the automotive manufacturing companies with tooling so they could machine the large stamping dies that made the body panels for the vehicles. Schneider & Company was one of Universals first distributors in 1926.
In 1934/35 time-frame the president of Universal Engineering called Tony Schneider, who was at home and not able to visit his customers. He noticed that Tony was quite depressed about it. Tony was a proud man but told him that he didn’t have money for gas to drive his car. This was 5 years into the nearly decade long great depression and before credit cards existed. Tony didn’t expect that the government would send him money but much to his surprise the president of Universal did; he had one the employees drive to Tony’s house and gave him $600 with no expectation that it would be paid back.
In the mid 1970’s Schneider & Company was the largest distributor for Universal Engineering selling between 2 – $3M annually of tooling which is worth about 3x in today’s dollars.
We are “weighed and measured” as business people in times like these. Support your employees and your supply chains today or you wont have them tomorrow.
– Cam Bonner, Vice President