A time well spent

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Time Well Spent:
A Conversation With Dick Teets
by Amanda L. Blyth
Richard P. Teets Jr. has made invaluable contributions to the steel industry as a founder of Steel
Dynamics Inc. (SDI). For AIST, he has served as a member, trustee, director, officer and president,
and dedicated much of his time to the evolution, guidance and leadership of AIST and the AIST
Foundation. His encouragement and support of his fellow workers, his mentoring and generosity,
and his support of young people in their pursuit of an education and career in the industry are an
inspiration. He retired from Steel Dynamics Inc. in March 2016. Teets is a member of the board
of directors of Steel Dynamics Inc., as well as the board of trustees of AWS Foundation Inc. and
Manchester University. He is a past president of AIST and past chairman of the Steel Manufacturers
Association. He also served on numerous committees for AIST, focused particularly on scholarships
and grants. Teets was named AIST Distinguished Member and Fellow in May 2016. Iron & Steel
Technology (I&ST) had the opportunity to speak with Teets prior to his retirement.
I&ST: What was the high point in your career?
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When we raised the financing that bought us the first
mill. That secured the reality of Steel Dynamics. So that
was a high point. But also everything after that — putting
the teams together, construction, commissioning and startups, and new products. We were so fortunate. Maybe it was
good luck or great timing or the moons were aligned. We
went from a construction phase in Butler in 1995 right
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Of course it’s with mixed emotions, but it’s the right thing
to do. It’s been 23 years of my life and it’s been a tremendous experience. I’ve been very fortunate and blessed in so
many ways. We went from just three employees to more than
7,500. On the steel side, we went from one mill to six mills,
plus six more facilities that do value-added processing and
handling. We never could have fathomed what we would get
ourselves into when we started out. It’s just been great.
My experiences have taught me how to do things right
when you form a company. When Keith, Mark and I left
Nucor — the best steel company you could work for at the
time — we considered how to make an impact on all of our
stakeholders: customers, suppliers and employees. So we
tried to tweak all of those concerns. In doing that, you fall
back on all of your experiences. We set up our system with
checks and balances to make sure there was fairness.
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I&ST: Tell us about Steel Dynamics Inc. How does it feel to be
moving on from the company you started with Keith Busse and
Mark Millett?
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into commissioning and made our first product in December 1995 — a hot band. Then we
started real production in January 1996, and
by the fourth month, we were break-even for
the whole steel mill. That sent the message to
our investors that this was really happening,
and then we went public in our 11th month.
Talk about a rapid succession of change! We
went from a private company to a public company in very short order. It changed the world
for us because that opened up other avenues
for financing, and we broke onto the scene as
an entity to be taken seriously. We made real
products, we had real customers and we delivered what we said we were going to deliver.
Then we just started expanding, and it was one
thing after another — a cold mill, then an Iron
Dynamics project, and then expanding on the
hot side with another arc furnace and caster.
Then I slid down to Columbia City to build the
structural and rail mill, and then we bought
the Pittsboro facility. It was a chain reaction
of non-stop movement. You can’t imagine how
much work goes into it, but how much fun it is,
and the camaraderie between the individuals
who are doing it.
I&ST: Is the camaraderie what you’ll miss the most?
Yes, the people. I miss it even here, sitting in
the corporate office.
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I&ST: You’ve made countless friendships
throughout your career in the steel industry.
How have your friendships impacted your work
experiences?
What has made SDI successful has been our
propagation of our culture. It’s those relationships that have created the culture. Anyone
with money can buy the equipment. Some of
the equipment we bought wasn’t necessarily
the newest thing money could buy, but we do
the very best we can to implement our culture
into newfound locations. The results speak
for themselves. Those relationships are very
special.
Every company you acquire does things better than you, but it’s how you work with those
people that were acquired. No one wants to feel
inferior. That’s our opportunity to say, “You do
a great job. Now let’s see if we can do it better
together,” and then start infusing our culture
into their world to see better results. Roanoke
— a great facility, with great people — had two
meltshops when we bought it, with two furnaces, casters, etc., and had a certain level of
production and did fine. After a period of time,
we decided to tear one of the furnaces and one
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SDI’s management team in 2001 (left
to right): Kevin Bort, Dick Teets, Will
Hawley, Kevin Perala, Roy Perala,
Chris Graham and Bill Kautz.
“Don’t try to plan your future. Just look for a
company that you would enjoy working for.”
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No. I’ve had the best career anyone could ever have. I
spoke at an event during Engineers Week in Fort Wayne,
and I said, “Don’t try to plan your future. Just look for a
company that you would enjoy working for.” I told them
how I worked underground in the coal mines, I worked in
research and development — I worked in so many arenas.
No one could’ve plotted my career path. It was random at
best.
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I&ST: As you reflect upon your own career, is there anything you
would have done differently?
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of the casters out and never looked back. Now we produce
more there than they ever did with two furnaces and two
casters. They accepted, willingly, a change of mentality of
doing business in the shop because it was our pay structure,
our safety structures, our willingness to say, “Ok, we make
mistakes. Move on,” and continue to make steel safely. It was
something novel to them, and not just at Roanoke. There
is more production at every facility that we’ve purchased.
Some of those facilities weren’t receiving their amount of
capital improvements from their previous owners, and we
decided to look, listen and ask, “What do you need?”
Steel of West Virginia — our only union facility — having
been purchased by a non-union company, perhaps thought
it would be challenging to live in our world. But it’s not about
living in our world; it’s still their world. We were concerned
about what we could do to make their jobs better and safer
while being more efficient. So we invested in them because
we believed in them. And they’re doing so much better than
they did prior to SDI. It’s just exciting.
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Dean Spires won a Harley
Davidson motorcycle at
the SDI company picnic
(2005). Also pictured are
Dean’s family, Mark Millett
and Dick Teets.
“...it’s been one hell of a ride. Everyone should
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have something close to it, or a piece of it.”
I enjoyed working in the coal mines. If it hadn’t have been
for a big piece of slate that fell out of the roof close by, I
might be an unemployed coal miner right now. I went up
to my boss and said, “I want more money for working down
there — I’m the lowest-paid guy.” He said, “See me Friday,
I’ll see what I can do.” I thought he was going to give me a
pay raise, but instead he gave me a transfer to a steel mill.
Then J&L merged with Youngstown Sheet and Tube, and
I was the only guy willing to go to Youngstown, then Indiana
Harbor and then back to Pittsburgh. I went into production
and maintenance, and worked turns in the BOF and caster.
People questioned when I went from a senior project engineer to a turn foreman. I said there was nothing wrong with
that, because you can learn all kinds of things anywhere.
I’ve gotten to do a ton of things. I wanted to be associated
with the most modern technology possible.
I&ST: You're a past president of AIST and have served on
numerous committees. How has your involvement with the
Association benefited you in your career?
I got involved in AIST in 1989. I talked earlier about wanting to be associated with the most modern technology. I was
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amongst professors. Kent Peaslee was a big part of that.
Without AIST, I would have never experienced those things.
I&ST: Do you still get just as excited about AISTech every year?
For different reasons. I look forward to it. I still try to walk
the floor. I try to go to every booth, shake people’s hands
and thank them for being there. That goes back to when
I was president, because I know it’s expensive to be there.
Not just in the floor space, but the time consumed by your
sales team. That’s a big commitment by some companies
that aren’t as big as others. So I always try to show them my
appreciation, ask them how this show compares to others,
if they have any recommendations and make sure they’re
vocal in their feedback.
It’s exciting to renew acquaintances I haven’t seen in a
while. Some I only see once a year.
I&ST: What challenges must be met with domestic steel
producers?
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The biggest challenge is low pricing. Pretty easy. Now,
what causes that is a multi-faceted problem. The vast majority of our problems stem from China and its failure to control its growth rate years ago, which is being reflected today.
The U.S. sometimes has 120 million tons of consumption a
year. The U.S. doesn’t go out and build capacity to meet 120
million tons of capacity.
Nobody can build a steel mill that’s just the right size for
their market. They’re then left with excess capacity. And just
because they have the capacity doesn’t mean that companies within their own market are going to buy, which then
creates more excess. I can remember hearing from equipment suppliers that China was building 100 million tons of
capacity a year. That is an amazing amount to reconcile in
the planning. They’re using it as an employment tool. Soon
countries have to throw up barriers until they’re stuck with it.
They might shut down some capacity because of antiquation
JUL 2016 IRON & STEEL TECHNOLOGY AIST.ORG
a member of AISE at the time, and I would always go to the
conventions. That was what you looked forward to as a young
engineer in the steel industry. Times have changed, but in
those early days, they would bring a rolling mill stand or a
caster and set them up. Huge pieces of equipment were displayed on the convention show floor — amazing stuff. You
would be dazzled by the magnitude. My first nine years were
with J&L and LTV, but in those days, the integrated community sort of kept you siloed. If you were in the blast furnace
or BOF, you lived in that world. So you didn’t get to see a lot,
even in your own mill. And sometimes they wouldn’t want
you to go there because you might like what you saw and lose
you to another department.
The only place to really get to see what the rest of the
steel world was like was at the convention. So you would try
to meet up with many of the guys and girls — even though
there weren’t too many women in the industry in those days
— and walk around and talk about what they were doing. I
was in bar products and tubular, and I learned about rolling stands, gap control, all kinds of stuff. There’s so much
to do, learn and see. You’d always go to the convention to
see what’s coming. Every year you could identify new things
— not earthshaking technologies, but improvements. Big
improvements.
What affected my career the most was a tabletop model
of a thin-slab casting machine by SMS that was purchased
by Nucor. I thought, “That is slick. That is some technology
that appears to be groundbreaking — if it worked.” It was
just a neat philosophy: near-net-shape casting. Just a year
before it seemed they rolled out near-net-shape in beams.
That was revolutionary then, and now it’s being taken to flat
rolling. And since I was in flat rolling at the EGL line in
Cleveland, it appealed to me.
Lo and behold, I got a call from a headhunter, asking if I
would be interested in talking to Nucor, because they were
putting a team together to build a facility in Crawfordsville.
I interviewed with Keith (Busse), who asked which job I was
interested in. I told him, “Cold mill manager,” and he said,
“You’ve never worked in a cold mill before.” I said, “I know,
that’s why I want the job.” Turned out I didn’t get the job.
Later on, he called and asked me to join his team as engineering manager. I said yes, and off I went to Crawfordsville.
So AISE created that knowledge for me. If I hadn’t have
seen that scale model at SMS’ booth, I wouldn’t have known
what it was and might not have interviewed. Like I said, you
can’t ever figure out your career path.
As I joined the AISE executive committee (2002–2008),
and we merged with ISS, that changed things because people with different backgrounds had to come together. It was
a good move for all of us. I enjoyed moving through the
organization. It created friendships, experiences and networking that last to this day.
I moved over to the Foundation for several years (2009–
2015) and enjoyed all the work with students. From my work
with the SMA and the Don B. Daily fund, there is a lot of
quality work being done between the organizations. I like to
think that we create a lot of value for members and goodwill
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AIST Executive Committee 2006–2007 (left to right): Andrew S. Harshaw, Richard P. Teets Jr. (president), Charles J. Messina, Nick Rymarchyk Jr.,
Richard E. O’Hara and Ronald E. Ashburn.
And then a year out of school, I pursued a graduate degree
in business. I said to them, “You can’t imagine all the things
that engineers do.” Engineers create higher utilization of
our steel mills, lower the cost, optimize product quality, etc.
— every one of those has a business aspect to it. There are
engineering aspects, of course, but you can’t do any of it
unless it’s economical.
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I&ST: Tell us about some of the major projects you’ve been
involved in.
and pollution, but I think they’ve failed when it comes to
achieving any goal that they’ve put out for themselves.
When you have that much excess capacity, it’s going to
find a price. And that price will keep going down and down
until it sells. It’s like an aircraft carrier. You can’t stop it, can’t
turn it. It’s a 10-year program. If you threw all of those people out of work, there are going to be social ramifications.
It makes it a very interesting time to be in the steel industry. And that’s what I said to the young engineers in Fort
Wayne. I told them I never took a business class. I took science classes — geology, biology. Why would I want business?
SDI has been good at implementing technology and
leading the way. Sometimes it’s hard to go in a new direction when you still have equipment that has useful life. Our
rolling mill design in Butler was unique in bearing sizes
20 years ago; producing lighter, higher-strength, low-alloy
products. We put in roll grinders that the world had never
seen. We were the first in the world to use polypropylene
pickle tanks, because everyone else had steel, rubber-lined
tanks. We were the first in the world to put in a two-stand
cold reversing mill. We thought about it at Nucor but didn’t
do it. Then there we were, six years later, doing it with our
own money. Some said that should make us more cautious,
but you’re just as apt to look at the ramifications and do the
right thing.
We did things that were so creative — we built a facility
with two galvanizing lines side by side and we put in a pickle
line that moved the product from the hot mill to the cold
mill. Ultimately, the paint line in Butler worked tremendously well.
In Columbia City, we built a structural mill. We didn’t
know if we would ever do rail, but I told SMS to build it in
case we would someday. The structural market was a good
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market. There was capacity for us in it, but it wouldn’t last
forever. And we were making all of our product 320 feet
long, which was novel — and hard to handle. Our rail is
the only rail greater than 80 feet long. We then installed
the weld line to take the 320-foot sections and weld them
together into 1600s. The industry loved it because it only
had five welds in one-third mile. Then our creative, talented
employees developed head-hardened rail.
We put in the first electromagnetic bottom in the EAF at
Roanoke and an EAF offgas analysis equipment for moisture and hydrogen for safety as well as performance.
We’re the only domestic steel company with its own paint
line. That’s important because everyone else ships their steel
to a paint line. That’s US$10–25/ton in freight costs. The
same idea with rail welding: we try to think of everything
we can do to be the low-cost person in the industry. Most of
these ideas came from the employees. That’s the key. The
paint line idea came from an employee. And now we’re putting in our third paint line in Columbus, Miss. We’re also
putting Galvalume down in Columbus, Miss., and we put
new sizing technology in Pittsboro. At Steel of West Virginia,
we put in new stackers and cranes to help them be safer and
more efficient.
The key to being a successful mini-mill is making sure
you’re the lowest-cost person providing the product. SDI
still has a lot of growth opportunities.
I&ST: The take-away here is that your success is due to your
personality. You’re not afraid to take chances and you want to do
the right thing.
I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Wouldn’t change it, ever.
Except tragedies that we’ve had — you never want another
one. But it’s been one hell of a ride. Everyone should have
something close to it, or a piece of it. F
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“For his invaluable contributions to the steel industry as a
founder of Steel Dynamics; for his many years of service
as a Member, Trustee, Director, Officer and President
dedicated to the evolution, guidance and leadership of
AIST and the AIST Foundation; for his encouragement
and support of his fellow workers to engage the industry in
the advancement of technology and the advocacy of our
mission; for his support of young people in their pursuit
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of an education and career in the industry; and for his
mentoring and generosity, which extend beyond the plant
and into the community. Throughout his career, he has
unselfishly given of himself to support, innovate and grow
the steel industry for the benefit of others.”