David W. Evans doesn’t lie when he says fabrication is a fun business to be in.
The 57-year-old Moline native is the fourth generation, and sixth family member, to run the George Evans Corporation (GEC), 121 37th St., Moline, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. With 82 employees, it fabricates all types of carbon steel, aluminum, stainless steel, copper and brass, as well as durable steel reels, for the wire and cable industry.
Mr. Evans has been working at the plant along River Drive pretty much his entire adult life, starting summers when he was at Augustana College. During his last two years there, the class of ’79 member also worked second shift starting at 3 p.m. He’s been company president since 1993.
“It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid,” Mr. Evans said of the family biz. “The expectation was there; I was the eldest son.”
He has two brothers — one a dentist in the DeKalb area, and another a computer specialist working for eBay in California. “They wanted to go their own way,” Mr. Evans said.
GEC was founded by his great-grandfather in 1915, manufacturing a variety of sheet-metal products, including parts for cars, including models made in Moline. In early years, the company served many local, regular customers, such as Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, Deere & Company, International Harvester, and other smaller companies in the area.
As the company progressed, so did product lines — including home heating furnaces, paraffin pots, telephone junction boxes, telephone cord repair tables, and reels for wire and cable companies. Across two city blocks, in three main buildings, expanded many times over the years, and 100,000 square feet of space, GEC produces about half metal fabrication, mostly for the farm industry, and half reels, mostly to serve cable, phone and oil companies, Mr. Evans said.
“Times were tough in the late ’70s, early ’80s,” he said, noting his father, David R. Evans, didn’t know if the business would survive. “We were driven down to a pale shadow of what we once were in the ’60s,” when they had more than 160 employees.
“Since I was interested, he decided to stay the course. I have a great deal of respect for my dad,” he said, crediting a salesman, Herb Wetzel, for recommending they get into fabricating for ag customers, and today CNH Industrial, which owns the former Case name, is a major client.
To prepare bids, Mr. Evans must look at a client’s blueprint, decide what process is required, and “figure out the cheapest possible way to do it, and still maintain quality and on-time delivery — which are a given in the business,” he said.
He remembers arguing with his father about the necessity of getting a fax machine. “D.R.” bet his son $5 “that we would never get 20 faxes within a month. In the first week, I collected my $5,” Mr. Evans said.
“One thing about being down here, every day is different,” he said. “Every day is like Christmas, opening up the mail and ewmail, finding out what projects there are to bid on.” GEC finds every way to cut pennies, which can make the difference, Mr. Evans said.
He recalls his grandfather once telling him, “It’s a good thing to learn from your mistakes. It’s an even better thing to learn from someone else’s mistakes.”
“I enjoy solving puzzles,” Mr. Evans said of why he likes the work. “You’re given a blueprint and told, ‘We need X amount of that.’ You’re competing against just about everybody in the upper Midwest. You have to figure out the puzzle, with the lowest cost, to win the bid, and still end up with enough coin at the end of the day to buy the new machinery and equipment necessary to keep going.”
“So that’s a challenge,” he said. “I don’t have to go to the boat to gamble. I’m gambling every day down here.” To compete with bigger firms, “You have to be clever, and innovate,” Mr. Evans said. “You don’t have the mass they do. You have to think out of the box.
“The nice part about being small, I can just walk out on the floor and tell them I want something,” he said. “Our response time can be faster, but that’s difficult because the bigger boys, once they get rolling, they have incredible momentum and incredible tools that, frankly, we can’t afford. We have to find a path to solve the puzzle.”
“When you put in the nights, and you get the response when you win, I tell you, there’s nothing better on Earth,” Mr. Evans said, noting he’s made several improvements in the past 20 years in building and equipment.
One of the first was after the huge flood of 1993, which happened just as he took over the reins.
His father was with him at the back dock. “He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Dave, you’ve got a hell of a problem here,’ and he turned around and walked away,” Mr. Evans recalled.
The company had to run everything out one door in the back during those two months, and Mr. Evans installed flood protection around his property, including a rocky berm and a concrete wall to keep water out. He also has several concrete blocks that can be added.
The most recent plant addition is a 10,000-square-foot building, to store parts for shipping, completed in 2011. “We were rapidly crowding out in the upper building. This floor is a foot above the highest flood stage to date,” Mr. Evans said.
He’s also added a robotic welder, several laser-cutting and machining pieces of equipment, to meet the exacting demands of clients.
“Sheet metal parts more complicated, with more features,” Mr. Evans said, noting he added lasers to “cut any odd shape you can draw.” There are many types of metals, each with a different performance value, that makes it suitable for the manufacturer and task, he said.
He also appreciates the outstanding quality and work ethic of his staff, with some at the company 20 to 40 years. “It’s a great group of people,” he said, noting he had to hire some new employees to replace a few veterans in the past year.
GEC — which ships across North America, and has customers all over the world — also has employees work four 10-hour days, so they get three-day weekends, and sometimes do overtime on Fridays, Mr. Evans said.
“I’m not nearly as great a delegator as my dad was,” he said. “I monitor a great deal of what’s going on here.” Mr. Evans may be the last of his family to work in the business; he has a 24-year-old daughter, and a son in his senior year at University of Illinois, neither of whom have expressed interest in the company.
“You’re deeply appreciative of everything that generations ahead of you had to fight through — depressions, wars, changes in the marketplace,” Mr. Evans said. “So you spend a lot of your time keeping the place going as best you can.”
Moline metal company chief celebrates centennial - Quad-Cities Online
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