In an age of globalization and a shrinking manufacturing sector, two young men in Wheeling are hedging their bets and running with a business idea that first took off in 1854. Hand-forged tools actually took off much earlier, but Warwood Tool has been in the tool-forging business for over 160 years now: hammers, crow-bars, pick-axes, you name it.
The New Guys
While showing me one of the factory machines that shakes the whole town Logan Hartle, the company’s new president, remembered his first time through the factory a couple of years ago:
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Logan Hartle, president of Warwood Tool
“We fell in love with the place,” Hartle said. “My background is in manufacturing. I’ve worked at places like Toyota, but never seen anything like this.”
Hartle is standing in front of the biggest drop forge in the factory. It’s a piece of machinery that uses gravity and a 3,000-pound weight to pound a glowing piece of steel into a tool. Workers throw these tools under the forge between drops. It’s a crazy scene out of a different time.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Phillip Carl, Vice President of Warwood Tool
“Our newest piece of equipment is 30 years old,” said Phillip Carl, vice president and general sales manager.
The two Marshall County boys are both 28 years old. They went to high school together, got degrees at the same time at West Virginia University, and for a while, found work outside of the state. But they decided they wanted to work together somehow, and they wanted to come home.
“We’re having a couple beers one night thinking, ‘What is there to do here?’” Carl remembered. “We forced ourselves to stay until we found something that fit our mold.”
Literally in this case. The young businessmen said they were at the right place at the right time to take over the tool-forging business.
The former president of Warwood Tool, James Haranzo, was once the mayor of Wheeling and spent 50 years with the company. Hartle and Carl believe in addition to their timing being good, Haranzo wanted to make sure the new owners were local, and would take care of the employees.
So with help from family to buy the business, Carl and Hartle signed the paperwork four months ago and retained all 13 current employees. For now, the young businessmen simply hope to maintain while they learn the ins and outs from some of the folks who have been around for a little while longer. Like the plant manager Cliff Thorngate who’s been employed at Warwood Tool for 40 years.
“They’ve brought fresh blood to the place,” Thorngate said. “I think it will be good for us and I think everybody feels that way.”
The Tour
The main building has tall, over-20-foot ceilings, with big windows that look out to Warwood on one side, and the Ohio River on the other. It’s spacious, but full of big machines like the drop forge, and furnaces breathing fire with various pieces of metal sticking out like toothpicks.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
furnace at Warwood Tool where metal is softened before being pounded into a new reality
Thorngate says all the machines work, though not all at once anymore – not since employment was more like 100 people in the 1970s.
He points to one especially giant hand press that was originally used to forge hammers. He says it was brand new when they first got it in 1928. The drop forge is used to make hammers today, but he says they’ve found other uses for the old hand press today. He says it’s a craft, forging tools, and like any other skill, it takes work and practice to perfect.
The steel comes in at one end of the factory, Thorngate explained. From there it’s cut to size, heated, pounded into shape, heated again or tempered, which is when they reheat a piece of steel to bring the grains of steel closer together. Thorngate explains that the tempering process and the fact that the tools are made of one, continuous piece of steel makes the tools exceptionally strong. Eventually, a tool like a crow bar, or a pick ax, or a hammer makes its way to the other end of the factory where it’s painted the traditional Warwood-Tool-blue.
“Years ago all the different tool company’s had their own color,” he said. “Blue was ours.”
The Promise
Company president Logan Hartle says the end result is an American, West Virginian-made quality tool.
But you won’t find Warwood Tool products in big box stores. Company vice president and general sales manager Phillip Carl explains that in the world of tool manufacturing, generally speaking, you either sell to consumers or you sell to industry. The Warwood Tool business model has been to supply railroad, steel, and coal industry companies with tools they need on the job. As those industries decline in the region, Hartle says they’re working to identify new markets.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“We will always be 100 percent made in America; we’ll always manufacture our of Wheeling, West Virginia; we will always handle with U.S. hickory and ash; and, we will always use our U.S. Union Labor,” said VP Phillip Carl.
“We are global,” Hartle said. “We sell a lot to Canada; we sell a lot to the mid-west. We’ve shipped to Singapore, Austrailia, England. Anybody who’s willing to pay for shipping, we’ll ship to.”
The businessmen are also working to build clientele in the oil and gas industry, and develop a market online. But Carl says some things will always be the same.
“We will always be 100 percent made in America; we’ll always manufacture our of Wheeling, West Virginia; we will always handle with U.S. hickory and ash; and, we will always use our U.S. Union Labor.”
So while other communities might be looking for the next big thing, these two young businessmen are banking on a traditional West Virginia product.
Momentum continues to mount behind local food and local economic development efforts in the Northern panhandle. Wheeling was one of the top picks in a national Local Foods, Local Places Competition. As a result, local organizations are receiving technical assistance from multiple state and federal agencies to help capitalize on the growing demand for local foods. Meetings with federal agency representatives began last week.
Local Places Protecting the Environment?
The Environmental Protection Agency initiated the national Local Food, Local Places program. The idea is to bring federal, regional, and state agencies together to help find and support existing local food and economic development efforts. Why would the EPA get in on the local movement?
EPA policy analyst Melissa Kramer explains that one reason is to promote lifestyles that rely less heavily on automobiles and all their emissions. She says the local life could go a long way toward that end.
“When you have a downtown that’s vibrant, that people want to live in, that has all the services that people need, ” Kramer said, “people have options for getting around that don’t involve driving. You find that there are a lot of people who want to walk, who want to bike.”
Kramer says that is healthier for community members, healthier for the environment, and healthier for the economy because dollar wind up staying with local businesses.
Federal, Regional, State, and Local Converge
Folks came in to Wheeling last week from Charleston, West Virginia, Durham, North Carolina, and Washington D.C. representing EPA, the US Department of Agriculture, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the State Department of Highways, and US Department of Transportation. These partners met with local Wheeling groups to talk about how to promote a local food system and grow the local economy in general.
It all started with a city tour from one of Wheeling’s trolley busses …
One of the tour guides was the director of the nonprofit Reinvent Wheeling, Jake Dougherty. He heads up one of three organizations that joined together to apply for the federal Local Foods, Local Places Grant. Others organizations include Grow Ohio Valley and the Wheeling National Heritage Area Foundation.
“Of the over 90 applications just in the Appalachian region, Wheeling stood out among all of them,” said Wilson Paine, a program analyst from the Appalachian Regional Commission who was involved in reviewing applications for the Local Foods Local Places Grant.
“Wheeling is emblematic of what a lot of Appalachian towns are going through right now which is searching for what their identity is going to be in the 21st century and how they can focus on the local aspects of building an identity,” Paine said.
“Wheeling is emblematic of what a lot of Appalachian towns are going through right now which is searching for what their identity is going to be in the 21st century and how they can focus on the local aspects of building an identity,” Paine said.
A Perfect Storm
Paine says there’s a perfect storm in Wheeling, combining youthful leadership, local food and area revitalization efforts, and ongoing region-wide partnerships. He says the existing infrastructure in Wheeling, combined with an engaged community, made Wheeling an ideal candidate for technical assistance.
Growing the Ohio Valley’s Local Food System
Executive director of Grow Ohio Valley, Ken Peralta, took a lot of questions during the tour of Wheeling. GrowOV is already deeply engaged in laying groundwork for a local food system in the region. In addition to the greenhouse, GrowOV has built multiple community gardens and a small organic farm inside the city. They’ve also got wheels in motion, so to speak, for a mobile vegetable market that will serve several counties in the region starting in June.
In addition to visiting some local food initiatives that are well on their way, federal and local partners visited a few areas of town that have been abandoned because they’re too steep to develop residentially or commercially. One hillside is slated to be planted with fruit trees and berries. Another, that overlooks all of downtown Wheeling and the Ohio Valley, will be a green, public space of some kind. Action plans that detail what, when and how are being developed.
Peralta is hoping for help testing water as well as engineering ideas or resources to help manage stormwater that flows off of these steep hillsides. He and his colleagues are enthusiastic about the raw resources that seem abundant in Wheeling.
And the Enthusiasm is Contagious
Jake Dougherty of Reinvent Wheeling says there’s now a critical mass of people in and around Wheeling who are dedicated to turning their “dying city” into a thriving Appalachian town. He also admits that new industrial development in the region could be playing a role in bolstering the economy over the last five years, perhaps adding to that growing sense of hopefulness.
“But what I think is great, and what I think we have learned most about our economy from the past,” Dougherty said, “the conversations we are having are not centered around a single industry; it’s centered around the diversification of our economy.”
Police in Wheeling say a suspension bridge has been closed after a cable snapped.
The Wheeling Suspension Bridge was closed Friday morning. Media outlets report the cable was on a snapped power line near a jogging trail.
In 2013, the bridge was closed after a corroded cable on top of the span snapped on the downtown Wheeling side. The cable helps to keep the bridge from swaying.
The suspension bridge was built in 1860 and connects downtown to Wheeling Island over the main channel of the Ohio River. It replaced a suspension bridge built in 1849 that was damaged by a storm in 1854.
Chef Matt Welsch is a local boy who, after touring the country on a motorcycle (writing a travel-cuisine blog about being a vagabond chef), returned to his hometown and set up shop.
Matt and Katie Welsch own and operate The Vagabond Kitchen in the bottom of the McLure Hotel. Starting out catering events, they were attracted by the large kitchen that allows them to prepare foods they serve up from scratch. About a year in, they continue to cater and now they also serve lunch, Sunday brunch, and dinner.
COME TO JESUS
Matt Welsch, the Vagabond Chef, says he had a “Come to Jesus” moment several years ago when he realized that… he was going to have to work for the rest of his life. So he and his bride Katie decided to hone in on what they felt was a life worth living: cooking.
“I never thought it would work out so well in my hometown that I love, here in my home state that I love,” Matt said.
Life as a vagabond has taught him a lot about the value of time and life.
Vagabond goals:
Provide a fulfilling workplace for employees.
Hand-craft cuisine.
Live locally.
Serve Community.
As for the style of food, he calls it New American Cuisine.
“I think that’s generic enough that I can make it mean whatever I want,” he said with a laugh.
LIVE LOCAL
Matt grew up on a dairy farm in the area and has ties to other farmers throughout West Virginia. He’s working with these local producers to prepare the food they provide, because above any dietary trends or food fashions, local food is of paramount importance to him. Whatever farmers produce, they’ll serve. Matt said he and his team are flexible, creative and they welcome culinary challenges.
In addition to the local food, Matt and Katie have local artists filling their walls with art, and local musicians filling the restaurant with sound.
SERVE COMMUNITY
“If we weren’t as passionate about helping Wheeling reinvent itself,” Matt said, “I don’t think we would be as successful as we are.”
There’s new enthusiasm in Wheeling that Matt said he’s never experienced in his years growing up in the area.
“There are still people who are kind of negative and stuck in the past, but there’s an active minority of really positive, excited people. And that’s the train that we want to get on board and help fuel.”
Matt says that new-found enthusiasm in Wheeling is making businesses like his possible. He’s hopeful that a spirit of collaboration will continue to grow.
Several cities participating in West Virginia’s home rule program are seeking approval to impose sales taxes.
The tax proposals and other requests will be considered by the West Virginia Municipal Home Rule Board on Monday during a meeting in Fairmont.
The Exponent Telegram reports that Charles Town, Martinsburg, Nitro, Parkersburg, Ranson and Vienna have proposed enacting sales taxes.
Wheeling is seeking permission to increase its existing sales tax. Milton’s proposal wasn’t immediately available.
Wheeling is one of the four charter home rule cities. The other cities were accepted into the program in October.
Board chairman Patsy Trecost says he expects the proposals will be approved, as long as the cities have taken certain steps. These steps include holding public hearings.
