Moving Metal

advantage of the blanking line was its advanced leveling capabilities, using stretcher levelers rather than roller levelers. This produced a flatter and more stable sheet for additional processing. “We’re raising the bar for the entire industry,” MacBeth concluded, “and the true beneficiaries of that are the customers.” In October 1999, Reliance acquired Dallas-based Arrow Metals, a division of Arrow Smelters Inc. Arrow Metals spe- cialized in non-ferrous metals processing and the distribution of aluminum plate and bar products. With additional facilities in San Antonio and Houston, Arrow Metals further diver- sified and expanded Reliance’s operations in Texas. It also helped diversify Reliance further beyond carbon and stain- less products, helping the company avoid exposure in single business lines. Reliance closed out 1999 with its fifth consec- utive year of record revenues and earnings since its 1994 IPO. INTO A NEW CENTURY Karla Lewis spent the last months of 1999 more con- cerned about the “Y2K Bug”—which businesses everywhere feared would wreak havoc with computer systems—than with revenues. As supervisor of the Reliance information systems upgrade team, she was not worried about mass failures since Reliance’s older systems were in accounting rather than oper- ations. January 1, 2000, came and went with few problems, but the upgrade was not in vain. “It was a better system for the people in the field to use,” Lewis later recalled. “Y2K just pushed us to get there a little faster.” Reliance began that year primed to continue on the expansion path with the February 2000 acquisition of the Hagerty Steel division of Hagerty Brothers, a 140-year-old company headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. Hagerty was

At Service Steel Aerospace, elaborate color coding identifies specialty metals and alloys in the inventory.

located three hours from Rockford and became a subsidiary of Liebovich Bros. It specialized in flat-rolled carbon steel, including hot-rolled pickled-and-oiled sheets. The addition— renamed Hagerty Steel & Aluminum Co.—appeared to be a good complement to Reliance’s earlier Midwest acquisition: Hagerty processed flat-rolled steel and Liebovich Bros. sold it. “We have an excellent long-term relationship with Hagerty and the synergies realized from the balance of our operations will work quite well,” said Greg Liebovich, then President of Liebovich Bros. It took some adjusting before those syner- gies could be completely realized, however. Hagerty was posting a loss each month and turning that around proved to be more difficult than expected. Gregg Mollins made the

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