Moving Metal

SURVIVING AND THRIVING P acific Metal Company began as Pacific Metal Works in San Francisco in 1876. Its founder, Frederick K. Morrow, produced lead solder for California linotype printers and fish canneries. In 1883, Frederick’s brother William N. Morrow opened a second facility in Portland, Oregon, to serve newly emerging industries in the Pacific Northwest. The company also began producing Babbitt metal, an alloy used in the logging industry, and started importing British steel via Cape Horn. In 1893, Pacific Metal entered the aluminum business, becoming the sole distributor in the Pacific Northwest for a time. In 1909, after the great earthquake and fire had destroyed the San Francisco location, the Morrow family moved Pacific Metal’s headquarters to Portland. William’s son, Harry F. Morrow, took over the company management and concentrated on developing the Pacific Northwest market. The remaining California business was sold in 1913 and the company was renamed Pacific Metal Works of Oregon. It changed its name again in 1922 to Pacific Metal Company. Pacific Metal expanded its territory after World War II by opening or purchasing facilities in Seattle, Washington (1947); Boise, Idaho (1953); Spokane, Washington (1962); Medford, Oregon (1968); Eugene, Oregon (1972); and Billings, Montana (1977). By the early 1980s, the Morrow family was out of the business and the company itself was in danger of being sold off. To save it, Chief Executive Officer Don Peck arranged for the creation of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and in January 1984, Pacific Metal became a sixty-percent employee-owned operation. The company’s former top-down corporate paternalism—common in many family- owned businesses—was transformed into a dynamic bottom-up management culture based on employee teamwork and initiative. The company took tremendous pride in the fact that when you spoke to a Pacific Metal employee, you spoke to an owner. “We expect the people doing the job to come up with ideas to improve the job,” Peck later commented.

Pacific Metal was acquired by Metals USA in 1998, and then in 2002 by Reliance after Metals USA filed for bankruptcy. In keeping with the Reliance philosophy of decentralization, and because Reliance understood the value of the Pacific Metal Company name to employees as well as its strong brand reputation, the company name was changed back to Pacific Metal Company—much to the delight of its employees. In the spring of 2004, Pacific Metal reluctantly moved its headquarters from Portland’s South Waterfront district to suburban Tualatin, Oregon. Meanwhile, Pacific Metal Company has played a key role in the Reliance network by servicing the important Pacific Northwest markets. John “Sandy” Nosler, a metals industry veteran with over four decades of experience, serves as the company’s current President and CEO. He reflects that “my experience with Reliance is one of tremendous gratitude for giving some 130 families the opportunity to continue with their livelihoods in the metals service center industry. We somehow managed to survive this process without the loss of a single employee or customer. That, combined with the total support of Reliance, has allowed us to have the most profitable years in our long history. It is fun to be a small part of the ‘best of the best.’”

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