Word: behlen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tight-fisted corporate execs have been the biggest brake on growth for several years, but they appear to be relaxing their grip. Tony Raimondo, CEO of Behlen Manufacturing in Columbus, Neb., estimates that war jitters were costing his metal-fabricating firm $2 million a month in lost orders--about 20% of his anticipated business. Raimondo expects spending to pick up now, as it did after Gulf I. Orders last week were twice what they were a year ago. Says Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo: "When I visit our customers throughout California, they all tell me they need...
...first problem is where to put it. All across "corndom," as Author E.J. Kahn Jr. likes to call it, there is a frantic search for storage space. In Dubuque they will use caves. On the Missouri River, they will tie up barges and stuff them. The Behlen Mfg. Co., in Columbus, Neb., which makes metal bins, has increased its work force from 350 to 750. Marion Havens, of Greenfield, Iowa, who assembles bins, is working triple his usual pace, rooting a new one every fourth day in some field. They point toward the blue sky like truncated missiles. If only...
...tinkering never ceased. (In 1947 he even dashed off a note to Los Alamos suggesting how to build an H-bomb.) What he could not learn from encyclopedias Behlen picked up by sending postcards to big manufacturers to learn their methods-and most cooperated. Says he: "I never could have stayed in business without Thomas' Register of American Manufacturers...
Paper Plan. Behlen's big break came in 1947, when he designed a frameless corn crib made of corrugated wire mesh. Farmers jumped at it because it was so simple to assemble. Behlen borrowed from the RFC to pay for a bigger plant, netted $305,000 that year and paid off the loan in six months. Then the corrugating idea really blossomed. One day he devised a new way of double corrugation by folding a piece of stationery in an unusual pyramidal form. It was so much stronger that he decided to use the principle for building. Panels...
...Today Behlen's frameless buildings are used for everything from grain elevators to supermarkets and churches. The buildings can be raised by 20-man crews in two or three days. A Behlen supermarket including interior costs $7 per sq. ft., about half the cost of a conventional structure. With his bigger plant, Behlen expects to boost his gross from about $16 million this year to $25 million in 1959. But he deprecates his inventive skill, feels he only applied old principles to new uses. Says he: "Any engineer can design a complicated gadget that can't be produced...