Career
I started banding coils at a wire mill in 1985. The About page has the short version. This one has the dates and the numbers.
Cordell Nail & Wire Company, 2014 to now
Family-owned nail manufacturer, founded in Danville, Illinois, in 1951. Two plants and about 640 employees. Draws its own wire and sells bulk and collated nails to building-supply distributors, lumber dealers and pallet and truss plants.
President & Chief Executive Officer
Reports to the board. First CEO from outside the Cordell family.
- Led a $36 million, four-year capital program (2022–2025): eighteen high-speed nail machines replacing 1970s-era headers, a new multi-block wire drawing line, automated packaging and robotic palletizing in Danville, and a new collating line in Jackson.
- Output per labor hour up 31 percent since 2021. About forty operators whose jobs were automated were retrained for maintenance and the new lines; none were laid off.
- Company-wide recordable injury rate down to 1.2 in 2025. The Jackson plant passed one million hours without a lost-time injury in July 2025.
- Kept customers on fair allocation through the 2021 rod shortage instead of selling to the highest bidder. On-time, in-full delivery has held above 96 percent every year since 2022.
- Opened the books: every employee sees the monthly plant scorecard and a simplified P&L at a quarterly all-hands on each shift.
Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer
Responsible for both plants, purchasing, logistics and customer service.
- Put an index-linked wire rod adjustment into distributor pricing in 2018, so price changes follow the steel market in both directions and customers get thirty days’ notice.
- Formed the Cordell Distributor Advisory Council in 2019: twelve customers who meet with our team twice a year and are encouraged to tell us what’s wrong.
- Kept both plants running through 2020 and added a third shift in Jackson to meet the surge in collated framing demand.
- Qualified a second domestic rod supplier and an approved import source, cutting the risk of a single-mill outage.
Vice President of Operations
Led manufacturing at both plants, about 560 people at the time.
- Introduced Daily Basics, a fifteen-minute start-of-shift meeting in every department, tiered up to the plant manager by 8:00 a.m.
- Cut average header changeover time from just over ninety minutes to under thirty, which freed up more capacity than four new machines would have.
- Rebuilt preventive maintenance and relaunched a four-year maintenance apprenticeship with a local community college; 34 people have completed it since 2017.
- Brought the recordable injury rate from 5.6 to 2.1 and replaced injury-count safety bonuses with leading indicators.
Distribution and building products, 2003 to 2014
Eleven years away from fasteners. Five of them buying, stocking and delivering building materials for a distributor, and six buying steel for a manufacturer that sold to distributors.
Vice President, Operations & Supply Chain
Pellston Building Products · maker of roof edge, flashing, ventilation and steel connector products, four plants, about 900 employees
- Consolidated five regional distribution centers into two without a drop in fill rate.
- Took inventory turns from about four to nearly seven, releasing more than $20 million in working capital.
- Ran plant operations in Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia and Texas, including a new roll-forming line in Georgia.
Director of Supply Chain
Pellston Building Products
- Bought roughly 70,000 tons a year of galvanized and painted steel coil through the most volatile steel market in a generation.
- Introduced monthly sales and operations planning across sales, plants and purchasing.
Director of Operations, Central Region
Tamsen Lumber & Supply · lumber and building-supply distributor
- Ran sixteen yards, two truss plants and a regional distribution center across Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, about 600 people and more than 130 delivery trucks.
- Introduced yard-level scorecards and delivery windows; on-time, in-full delivery to contractors rose from 81 to 95 percent.
- Led the 2007–2008 consolidation of four yards while keeping both truss plants open on reduced schedules.
Ashby Wire Products, 1993 to 2003
Ten years at one wire and fastener company, in three jobs and two states.
Plant Manager
Ashby Wire Products · 185,000 sq. ft. wire drawing and cold-heading plant, 210 employees
- Took over a plant that was losing money and on the company’s closure list. Returned it to profit in the second year.
- Scrap from 7.4 to 2.1 percent; on-time delivery from 68 to 96 percent; recordable injury rate from 8.9 to 2.4.
- Added a third shift and forty jobs by 2003.
Quality Engineering Manager
Ashby Wire Products
- Led the plant’s first ISO 9001 registration in 1998.
- Put statistical process control on every header and thread roller; customer returns fell by more than half.
Process Engineer
Ashby Wire Products
- Worked on wire drawing and cold heading: die life, lubricant changeovers, coil handling.
- Cut wire breaks on the main drawing line by about 40 percent with a new die sequence and better rod surface prep.
Kewanee and Urbana, 1985 to 1993
Four years on and off the floor of a wire mill, then four years of school paid for mostly by the mill.
B.S., Industrial Engineering
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Paid for mostly with night-shift savings and summers back on the maintenance crew in Kewanee.
Summer Hand, then Maintenance Helper and Millwright Trainee
Ostrander Wire Works · independent wire mill, about 150 employees
Two summers sweeping scale, banding coils and pulling rejects, then two years full-time on the night maintenance crew. By the end I could change a capstan bearing in under an hour, which was about forty minutes slower than the man who trained me.