Business View Magazine | December 2019

231 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 M. GERV I CH & SONS , INC . from about 1945 on, it was operated by Sam, my father, and Jules, my uncle.” Doug joined the family business in 1978, with a BA from the University of Iowa, a Masters Degree in Speech Pathology and Communicative Disorders from Truman State University in Missouri, and no formal background in business. “My father, at least, had the law background, which was pretty helpful,” he quips. “Over the course of 15 or so years, I bought the business and I’ve run it ever since. My father stayed on until his mid-80s as a consultant and mentor. Around 1995, we decided to go into the new steel business, because we saw a lack of that offering to our local industry. We hired a new steel manager and have been in both sides of the steel business since the mid-’90s. My father passed away in 2002. My son, John, got his Bachelors Degree and went on to medical school; did two years there and then decided to join me in the business. So, now it’s Doug and John in the leadership.” The scrap business, Doug notes, is divided into two camps – the suppliers who sell their scrap metal to the company, and the mills buying processed scrap that serves as raw material feedstock for their melting processes. “We would not survive without those industries that we purchase scrap from,” Doug admits. “We get scrap from the industrial base, which is the largest and most important one, and those are mainly manufacturers; and then, from demolition contractors, and from small dealers/peddlers. We cover, on day-to-day basis, about a 75-80 mile radius – maybe as far as a hundred on some special jobs. When we haul from a manufacturer into our yard, we might haul 15-20 tons on a truck. When a small dealer or peddler comes in, they might have two tons. So, we buy from all three of those areas. Then, we process it and ship it; we are direct mill shippers. All of our scrap goes directly to the people who are going to melt it. Some of our customers at the end of the supply chain would be Nucor Steel, U.S. Steel,