How Your Fence is Made with OKBrand

Are there very many pictures as pretty as a brand-new stretch of barbwire fence? Posts perfectly straight, wire absolutely level and slick cattle grazing on the right side of the fence complete that image in my mind. 

But have you ever stopped to think about what has to go on behind the scenes to make that view possible? It doesn’t just start with the early morning start on loading supplies or the inevitable family event missed because of wayward mammals. Is doesn’t even start with the drive into town or checking out at your local farm store. The story begins with a group of people somewhere in the world who take pride in producing a product that cattlemen rely on. 

On this episode of Angus at Work we welcome you to listen in as we visit with Bradley Burchfield, a member of the Agricultural Inside Sales Team at OKBrand, to discuss:

•  The history of the company,
• How different types of fencing are manufactured,
• The importance of buying U.S.-made products,
• Why the people who work at OKBrand make all the difference,
• And more!

A huge thank you to Purina for their sponsorship of this episode.

Additional Resources:

• Flexibility and Smart Supplementation with Karla Wilke 
• Will Your Bulls Be Ready Come Turnout Time? with Jeff Erquiaga 
• Don't Feed Cows Like You Did 20 Years Ago with Ted Perry
• Boosting Cow Herd Efficiency with Ionophores
• Subscribe to the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA

Find more information to make Angus work for you in the Angus Beef Bulletin and ABB EXTRA. Make sure you're subscribed! Sign up here to the print Angus Beef Bulletin and the digital Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. Have questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you! Contact our team at abbeditorial@angus.org.

Transcript

Lynsey McAnally (00:04):

Angus at Work, a podcast for the profit-minded cattleman. Brought to you by the Angus Beef Bulletin, we have news and information on health, nutrition, marketing, genetics and management. So, let’s get to work, shall we? 

Are there very many pictures as pretty as a brand new stretch of barbed wire fence? Posts perfectly straight, wire absolutely level and slick cattle grazing on the right side of the fence complete that image in my mind. But have you ever stopped to think about what has to go on behind the scenes to make that view possible?

It doesn't start with the early mornings loading supplies or the inevitable family event missed because of wayward mammals. It doesn't even start with the drive into town or checking out at your local farm store. The story begins with a group of people somewhere in the world who take pride in producing a product that cattlemen rely on.On this episode of Angus at Work, we welcome you to listen in as we visit with Bradley Burchfield, a member of the Agricultural Inside Sales team at OKBrand to discuss the history of the company, how different types of fencing are manufactured, the importance of buying U.S. made, and why the people who work at OKBrand make all the difference.

But first, we want to take a moment to thank Purina for their sponsorship of this episode.

Purina ad (01:33):

Raising cattle demands grit, determination and the right nutrition. That's why cattle producers have turned to Purina Animal Nutrition for over 130 years. From starters that help set calves up for success to protein that fuels cattle growth and on to minerals that keep herds performing. Purina has the products and expertise that work as hard as you do. Get rewarded for your work with proven nutrition from Purina. Learn more at purinamills.com/cattlecare. That's purinamills.com/cattlecare.

Lynsey McAnally (02:03):

Welcome to Angus at Work. I'm your host, Lynsey McAnally, and today we're going to visit with a company producing a product that our audience is very familiar with wire panels and rolled fencing. So we first met last August during an industry tour, Bradley. What an experience! It might've been the hottest temperatures I've ever been a part of inside the melt shop. But before we jump into the episode, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and your role at Oklahoma Steel & Wire?

Bradley Burchfield (02:30):

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. It gives us a chance to tell our story. I've been here for about seven years now, and I've had a pretty good experience. I've been around for a long time in the grand scheme of things. So my dad started here as one of the first employees outside the family. I think he just started his 46th year. So I've been around for a lot of changes and a lot of things that we've gone through and seen even as a kid to now. I never thought that I wanted to come back and work here. My dad worked here for so long, I just thought maybe I want to get out and do something else. And when you get out of town, I think that's when that realization goes back that, hey, maybe that's not a bad place.

So maybe Madill isn’t such a bad place to live. And Oklahoma Steel is actually a really, really great place to work. And I had that realization. I came back and I was offered a job. I think a lot of it was because I know the people, the process and the facility and then the customers are one of a kind in the ag industry. We’ve done a lot of growing and I wanted to come back to be a part of that growth.

Lynsey McAnally (03:43):

And I think that's one of the things that struck me whenever we did the tour in Madill was how many people have been working at Oklahoma Steel & Wire for decades. You guys seem to not have near the turnover that one would expect from a company of your size.

Bradley Burchfield (04:02):

I would agree with that. We did some employee videos a couple years ago around our company dinner time and one guy said it pretty well, the people that come just looking for a job and are just looking for something to pass the time, they don't stay very long. And I think that's with any job, but the people that really want to commit and make this place a home, they have a home here at Oklahoma Steel, Mid-America, all the different companies. And I think that's really important because if you like what you do and you feel like you're at home, it's a much better place to work. And I think that has a good outcome on our employment status. 

We've got that and you probably saw it in our new training building. We've got that OKBrand Wall of Honor. We've got multiple 40-year employees, 30-year, 20-year and 10-year. That wall is just full. And it's something that we're very, very proud of because tenured employees show that it's a good place to work and we've got a lot of industry knowledge in those 40 year, 30 year, 20 year and tenure. That's a lot of industry knowledge that most people don't have.

Lynsey McAnally (05:06):

And it was apparent to me during that tour as well that any of the jobs on the line, those are highly skilled jobs and those folks take a lot of pride in what they do. I got the chance to just hang out with one of the gentlemen on a barbed wire machine for probably 20 minutes because it wasn't something I'd ever seen before. 

He was so proud to show everybody what it is that he does and my mind I think just couldn't process what I was seeing because it's an entirely different thing to see that roll of wire in the store or in a lot somewhere versus seeing it created and trying to wrap your mind around how exactly that's happening. And I just was so thankful to him that he took the time to get to talk to him and for him to walk us through that process is really cool. And it seems that you've become somewhat of the company tour guide when it comes to sharing the story of Oklahoma Steel & Wire and OKBrand. So what's the history of the company and where were they before they settled in Madill?

Bradley Burchfield (06:06):

In the 1960s, they had a steel mill. The first, I think, mini or micro steel mill in Iowa. So they had before it is what it is today, they had Iowa Steel & Wire in Centerville, Iowa. So I think it's southeast Iowa, maybe south Central, depends on how you look at it. But they started there. It was a much smaller company, but there was a lot of ingenuity in that. Like I said, it was the first of its kind in Iowa and just the opportunities for employment and growth weren't quite there. So the connections that we make in the cattle industry and just in the ag industry in general ...  BL, he's kind of the patriarch of Oklahoma Steel and all the companies, they were actually at the American Oil in Kansas City and they met a guy named Hal Courtney had a real estate agency and things like that.

He told him he was looking for a place closer to Houston because Houston at that time was the port where most of the steel rods and things came to. So he was trying to be a little bit closer down there to make ease of access of material to him a lot easier. So he wanted to be close to Houston and how Courtney said, I know this place, they just vacated the facility. They built a new facility on the north side of town, come to find out that it was the WW trailer facility. So they made WW trailers in our old, the first building up here, and you probably saw it, that's where they made WW trailers for a long time. They come down here and looked, it was a fit. They sold Iowa Steel & Wire to a place called Penn-Dixie and BL made him promise that they weren't going to shut the factory down or sell the factory.

They were going to keep everybody employed. They said they would. So BL picked up his family, moved down here to Madill. Unfortunately, Penn-Dixie did shutter that mill and BL went back up there and told the employees, once he gets Oklahoma Steel established, he would be back. He would hire the families back. But it was a struggle. And Kathleen does a really good video about the early years of Oklahoma Steel - that's Bill and Coleen's daughter. It's hard. It's just like any other business, especially in the ag industry, because you're following a lot of trend patterns that go up and down and then you're following the steel markets and everything else. So they started out making cattle panels because there wasn't a steady flow of panels in the ag industry at that time. So she says at best where they'd make a truckload of cattle panels a week and that was a huge accomplishment. Now we could ship out 30 to 40 a day. I mean it is crazy kind of that timeframe from the 1970s to now what that volume looks like. But we've kind of just slowly progressed throughout the years. It was just the family in the beginning and they brought on a few employees. They started galvanizing some wire, they moved into roll goods, barbed wire, they had some other panel machines. So to come to fruition, they kept growing, but it was mainly on the finished good side.

And BL, he had a dream that he wanted to basically melt his own steel and make the products. So I think in 2008 we went and got the rod mill got it up and running, and then 2011 or 2012, they bought the melt shop. That kind of finished the trifecta of that process. So it became fully integrated from a recycling standpoint, not necessarily mining iron ore, things like that. They completed the trifecta that he could melt, scrap steel, turn into billets to rod to wire and then finish products. So kind of the future was in our hands. We didn't have to rely on other people for the inputs of those products. So we could service the ag industry a lot better, but it's made us very efficient and now we service pretty much every state in the US inadvertently. We send some stuff to Canada and then to Hawaii and stuff. We've got some customers that send stuff out that way.

Lynsey McAnally (10:05):

Very, very cool. I always love that story and we'll get into a little bit the entire family of Oklahoma Steel & Wire, but the story of going back and almost repurchasing the Iowa Mill and reopening that and continuing on that promise to his employees, I feel like what I take away from that is the family's devotion. The fact that everybody that works at Oklahoma Steel and Wire or MidAmerica is part of that family. That's something I think that's very unique to the ag industry. And so I love hearing that story, but I can't think of a better place to start on our virtual tour than MidAmerica. So do you mind helping us use our imaginations to do a little bit of a walkthrough of the process from obtaining that scrap to sending the wire product up to the fencing plant?

Bradley Burchfield (10:58):

Absolutely. And I'll kind of break it down when we talked about the kind of company's under the umbrella of okay brand, that's kind of our new branding brand and MidAmerica kind of the semi-finished goods. So we have MidAmerica, Oklahoma Steel and Iowa Steel. So MidAmerica is where we melt the scrap, it's our melt shop and our rolling mill delve in a little deeper in that the melt shop, we melt about 60 tons of steel every 45 minutes to an hour 24/7. We do a couple shutdowns every year for routine maintenance and things like that. But we melt 60 tons in. We will slide off about five tons every hour. So we get a usable steel of about 55 tons. And what that does is we're a continuous cast facility and we operate a little bit different than most are continuous cast all the way to the rolling mill.

 We like a little bit of separation there just for something does go down, you have some autonomy to keep rolling your rods or keep melting billets, vice versa. But that continuous cast means that we melt in the EAF, which is an electric arc furnace, that's your initial melt where you melt all that and then they move it to the LMF, which is a ladle metallurgy furnace. That's where we refine it. And you probably saw it when you were here. They stick some tubes in there, they take some samples, put it on a spectrometer. And what that does is that gives us a reading of everything that's in there and if we need to refine it back and put certain things in it, we can do that because we want a very consistent high quality Mel. And we use a graded sorted scrap. So it comes to us graded and sorted.

 So we're not just buying junk cars and throwing the whole thing in there or whatnot. We try to get a good high quality scrap kind of your base point where you want to start a good quality product. And then what we'll do from the LMF is it continues to roll and pour and everything like that without stopping. If one point of that stops, the whole operation stops within a certain amount of time, but then we'll go over there and we'll tap it. And then we do two laying heads for the billets. And those are about six and a quarter by six and a quarter by, I think they're like 32, 33 foot long. They're very dense. I think on average they're about 120 pounds (lb.) a foot (ft.). So that's the finished product. You have a billet steel and that's where we start tagging everything from the melt.

 So that's really important in our traceability aspect for American melted steel. And then the other side of MidAmerica is the rolling mill. We take those billets, we move them over there. Again, it's the same company technically down there, but it's a different operation. So we reheat those to pliability and then we roll them out. We're not really stretching it because if you can't really stretch a paperclip, but if you bend it and break it, it breaks pretty easy. But what you want to do is you want to massage that steel out and roll it because we reheat it and roll it out. So we take that 30 ft. some odd billet and we'll roll it into our smallest size. We can roll eight miles a rod into one coil, which goes to a lot of different industries, ag industry, automotive, industrial, things like that. Not just agriculture, but we use the majority of it in agricultural products.

Lynsey McAnally (14:02):

And when you say it's a coil, I think people need to understand this is a massive coil of wire.

Bradley Burchfield (14:10):

It changes a little bit here and there running different variations, but you can get up to about that eight miles worth of rod, which that takes up that whole facility you saw. It's a very long facility. I mean it starts in the furnace at the beginning and it comes out on the very end and drops straight down off the end of that building. And it looks like a pretty large hot slinky essentially.

Lynsey McAnally (14:32):

Very cool to see. And the scale of both of those locations was just wild to me. But can you talk a little bit about how many employees are in the melt shop in particular and then what the temperatures are inside that building and kind of what that environment looks like

Bradley Burchfield (14:49):

Approximately at all different companies? We have anywhere from probably seven to 800 employees roughly. There's probably 290 to over 300 working down at MidAmerica and, Lynsey, you probably saw it. There's not many people on the floor when you're walking around there and it's very hot. It's on average, we're probably about 140 degrees on the floor, so it gets pretty toasty. But most of those guys, if everything's running good, they're in their cooling rooms and things like that. I think every hour they probably work maybe 30 minutes max out of every hour. So they're in cooling rooms and when they are out there, they go back and kind of bring their ambient body temperature back down so they're not getting hot, getting cold, things like that. But it seems like a dirty, hot working environment, but they get pretty acclimated to it because of unless something goes wrong where they all have to get out there and fix it. But they all work as a crew where everybody comes out at once and gets the problem fixed. So if they're running good, it's probably a little more comfortable environment than if not.

Lynsey McAnally (15:56):

I also noticed electrolyte popsicles in several places and it seemed like everybody was taking advantage of that and electrolyte drinks. That was the only time I'd ever stepped outside of a building in Oklahoma in August, and it felt cold outside.

Bradley Burchfield (16:12):

It feels like air conditioning outside.

Lynsey McAnally (16:14):

So once it is in a coil, what then happens at that point? Where is it going?

Bradley Burchfield (16:21):

So we transport that to Oklahoma Steel, which is up the hill is what we call it because we're kind of on a slope here. Most people that drive through Madill, they see the front set of buildings. They don't know how massive our facility is behind there.

Lynsey McAnally (16:33):

I want to roll into the fencing plant, but also can you give us a rundown of the products that you market to the ag industry?

Bradley Burchfield (16:41):

Yeah, so from Oklahoma Steel, to break it down into really three categories, we have barbed wire, field fence and wire livestock panels. So in those, we have many subcategories and styles of product from those, but those are the three kind of categories. Now we do make some concrete reinforcement mesh, things like that for the Buy America Made America Act for highway byway and bridge projects. But mainly we do a lot of ag products. So high tensile and low carbon, barbed wire, high tensile and low carbon field fence, three different styles of knots on the field fence and I would say probably one of the largest varieties of wire livestock panels in the ag industry. So that's kind of an overview. And there's just so many subcategories that we do because we know as farmers and ranchers, not everybody uses the same thing and everybody wants a little bit of something different and they're trying to match or build something. An application is key. Not everybody has the same application for a product and it's not going to work for everybody depending upon their livestock.

Lynsey McAnally (17:46):

Can you talk a little bit when that wire actually hits the fencing plant, what that process looks like and then how it's divided out into the different locations for different products?

Bradley Burchfield (17:59):

Yeah, and I'll touch what you said. I equate what we do like far as wire, like a pallet of barbed wire or fencing or some panels in the store. I like to equate that back to the food on the shelf in the store. Most people have no idea where it comes from. And I think we've lost touch with a lot of that agriculture. And it's the same thing with wire. You really don't give it much thought. You just go to the store and it's there and you buy it because you need it. You don't give much thought on how it got there or how it's made and things like that. So us doing these tours is very, very important to us to bring that to reality. But going back to the wire mill, so we'll bring the cools the rod up and obviously we have a lot of different grades depending on what product that it goes into.

But all that rod pretty much goes through what we call the drawing and galvanizing department. So what it does, it takes that rod and similar to the rolling mill, except we do a cold draw because every time you apply heat to wire rods, you lose tensile strength. So we're trying to avoid using heat as much as we can to a certain extent to keep those tensile strengths consistent. So we do a cold draw and basically it puts it around a bunch of drums and kind of pulls and stretches it. You're not just pulling it straight out because you would break it, so it's going to kind of pull and stretch it. And you also got to pay up that distance because like I said, you took a 30 some odd foot billet, you're turning eight miles of rod, you're paying up a lot of distance.

So the speeds and all that have to be correct and they have to be paying off at a certain amount to get everything running correctly. And it's the same thing with the drawing. It's on a much smaller scale, but you probably remember seeing those drones where the wire was real loose at the top and it got really tight and it would go to the next drum and it just kind of pulls and stretches and it does still get hot, even though it's called a cold draw. It's kind of like a paperclip where you kind of bend it back and forth until it breaks. You are not applying heat to it, but that friction sitting there bending it causes it to pull apart. And it's the same thing with rod. It still warms up because you're manipulating that wire and you're making it small and you have to run at a certain speed to get to a certain diameter.

That's what we call a bright basic wire. It's non galvanized, and we'll take that, we'll tag it. They'll either put it in storage in a warehouse or something like that if we're trying to make a run. Or they'll take it over to the galvanizer and we'll galvanize 40 lines or something on one galvanizer. So we run it through a sand furnace, which we call it sand more commonly. It's actually a silica that works as almost an abrasive or a sandpaper that kind of floats over it cleans that, and then it runs through a water bath, an acid bath, and then goes through a zinc furnace. So we make sure we can get a good consistent zinc coating on those products. But then again, it's get put on a carrier, you tag it, you put it in a warehouse, and then it gets dispersed to whichever products that that wire is going into, whether it be the barbed wire department, the high tensile barbed wire, department, field fence, whatever.

Lynsey McAnally (20:58):

How do we get it from just straight wire that's coiled and in the warehouse to a barbed wire product that's on a roll that they'll see in Tractor Supply or their local farm store?

Bradley Burchfield (21:10):

Yeah, so I think the guy that you talked to, he's been a long time. I think he's had over 40 years here now, Fortuno probably is who talked to you there. He's very, very proud of his job. Just like everybody out here. I'll touch on that for just a second. You were here and you saw these ladies and gentlemen shutting their machines down and slowing them down to show everybody a glimpse at what they do day to day. And what a lot of people don't understand is when they do that, it literally affects their pay because they're getting paid on production, but they're so proud of the products that they're manufacturing. They want to show the users, the end users of that product, what they put into it to make those. So that's really important. Fortino is one of the best, but he wants to stop.

And if somebody wants to see something by goodness, he's going to show them. He's going to make sure you understand what you wanted to see and it's very important. That's a very good culture thing that we have going on here, that people are very, very proud of their work. But in that barbed wire department, it's very labor intensive still. And we've done a lot of things to eliminate much harder labor because back in the day, those are based on an early to mid-1900s machine. We've obviously made a lot of advances, but there's a lot of new machines in the market. They don't run the barbed wire to our standards that we want to run it. So we built a lot of these machines and kind remanufactured them the way that we see best because I think I might be a little biased, but I think we make a very, very good product across the board.

But barbed wire especially. So those machines we've designed and things like that, there's not a lot of computers. And we've done some renovations to some machines that we're building kind of a top secret type deal, but we're doing things to make it easier on the operator. That's the main goal with that same great quality in mind of our product. But all of them essentially run the same way. You've got three different sets of wires unless you're running four point, you'd have four, but you got two wires coming in. One wire runs through the machine and gets a barb put on. If it's two point, the barb will be put on the other wires running pretty close to the top of it, kind of runs over a tension pulley that's set in the barbs facing, and then it'll go around and there's a cradle inside of that machine in the cage where you put the reel and what it does, it sits there and spins that cradle the whole time that machine's running.

And that's what gives barbed wire its twist. That's why they call it continuous twist barbed wire. And a lot of people don't know that. And that's why I think most people, much like yourself, Lynsey, that's their favorite part in seeing it. And you really don't think that because we talked about it a little bit before the show started, most people are not happy when they buy it. They're not happy when they're putting it up, usually the most inopportune time. But there's that split second there at the end where you get the fence put up, it's a nice pretty new fence on some very beautiful land and you hopefully have some cattle behind it or some kind of livestock and you have a really good appreciation for that fence. And the hard work that went into putting that same thing with barbed wire, they go to see it and brings a little more understanding to what it takes to produce that product.

There's obviously a lot more complicated speeds and gears and things like that, but that's kind of an overview of how barbed wire works. It all runs through at the same time. It runs really fast and you can't really see a whole lot of it unless you just really slow that machine down. But those guys that are running it, they have a really keen eye to make sure that machine's running correctly and putting the barbs in the right spot and twisting it just the right amount so it pays off correctly and it stretches correctly and things like that. So that's like a little key overview, but obviously there's a much more in depth process that you kind of have to see to really understand it.

Lynsey McAnally (25:08):

And it was my understanding that 2020 was a year that brought a lot of changes for OKBrand and the OKBrand family. So correct me if I'm wrong, but in 2020, not only did you all deal with COVID, but you also had a pretty large tornado that came through and damaged the facility. So that was a very unfortunate dynamic duo you all dealt with. What did that look like and what effect did it have on Okay, brand's ability to supply product during that time period?

Bradley Burchfield (25:43):

2020 was one heck of a year to say the least. With COVID going on, we were still producing fully. We had to limit contact between operators, things like that. Machinery break rooms had to be a little more spaced out and different things like that at the time. At the end of the day, we were essential because we were in the ag industry.

Lynsey McAnally (26:04):

We all knew that, but it was nice to have somebody recognize it!

Bradley Burchfield (26:09):

Absolutely. And not only that, but Oklahoma Steel and companies lost the matriarch that year in 2020, Ms. Colleen passed away that year, but they had lost a son in 2020 in a mid-air airplane crash. Ms. Colleen's brother had passed away earlier on. So every one of those hits takes a personal and a business toll just because of they've built the company, but things must go on. And then the tornado hit. I was one of the last ones here in the office. It was close to 5:00 p.m. My mother still works for the City of Madill and she called and asked where I was and I said, "Well, I'm still at the plant." And she said, "The fire department said there's a tornado across from Walmart. Walmart is diagonal from us. Me and another guy looked out the front glass door and we could see the tornado coming down across the road behind our accounting office.

He took off running to the county office to make sure all the ladies were in the safe room. And then I got in my truck and we drove around back to make sure everybody we put in cellars years ago BL did. So we got around there and went right over the top of our facility, took down a few buildings and it was a heck of a day. And we got out there was sun shining where it shouldn't be shining, but luckily nobody was injured either in the tornado or in the facility. That did have an effect because all of a sudden people weren't going to work every day and they were at home doing projects. So the market kind of took off and it grew exponentially overnight and things were selling. And luckily the way that okay, brand works in our companies, you were talking about our storage facility and how much product we had, that's a service aspect for us.

We know that farmers, ranchers can't just wait on product if they've got time this weekend or something. We want to be able to service our customers the best that we can. So we keep everything that we manufacture in stock within reason and time of the year and things like that. Luckily, we had stock in all of our products because we were down eight to nine months. Some parts of our facility came up much before that, but from time of the tornado to being rebuilt, plus a couple additional buildings that we built after that, we were eight to nine months, which that was a heck of a task because insurance and even some of the firefighters things like that, they said, this is going to be years. This is going to be years for y'all to rebuild this. And that next day we showed up at probably 6:00 a.m. and again, the culture of the OKBrand family, every one of those employees was standing out front of that gate, that turnstile.

They had hard hats in their hand and they were ready to show up to work, to clean up. I mean, that was a powerful statement probably to the family and everybody that worked here that. Hey, we're in this together and we're going to get through this. Because times are hard all the time. It doesn't pick a specific time when you can get through it easily. It is rough. But we got through it and everybody was here to help. And there were people out there running a wire without roofs. They were running under the light of light towers. I mean, it was a pretty powerful for us.

Just again to envision that. But it doesn't surprise me after getting to talk with the staff that you all have and meeting them, they, they feel like they're a part of the family and they are a part of the family and that was just really special. I know that was a very tough time for all of you, but during COVID, I think a lot of people turned and I were more focus came upon buying us made product. And do you think that during that time period did you see more people turning to buying US product?

Bradley Burchfield (30:04):

We did see an influx obviously because a lot of your farmers and ranchers aren't buying, I would say import product, but some of the smaller farms ranches may depends on what their price point is and what the cost is. So sometimes they buy imports, sometimes unknowingly they're buying imports.

Lynsey McAnally (30:21):

I would say that's probably what happens the majority of the time is just not knowing where the product is produced at or assuming that it's a U.S.-made product. I think that it became a little bit more of a focus for many of us to see, okay, where is this company located and where are they sourcing their materials?

Bradley Burchfield (30:42):

A supply chain aspect, we are probably one of the better servicing companies as far as having material on the ground. Again, within reason, depending on time of year, fencing season can get a little bit crazy out there, but day in and day out, our service is bar none. I mean, we can service our customers very, very well and not saying that anybody else can, but we just know what we do and what we do well and keeping product on the ground as a part of that.

Lynsey McAnally (31:11):

And I've seen those storage lots. Again, we talked about this a little bit earlier. They're massive. And I wanted to ask you, I think you gave us some numbers on that tour, but how many panels and or rolls of wire does OKBrand usually have onsite in those lots at any given time?

Bradley Burchfield (31:31):

It could vary by time of year, by month, I mean you're in the thousands. I mean it varies. Not given a specific number out there, but we keep plenty of stock of everything.

Lynsey McAnally (31:46):

Mountains of panels is what it appeared from looking from the hill down onto that yard, and I'm assuming a gravel yard, it looks like it had pretty hard footing and it just looked like a ton of panels out there and probably more panels than I'll see in the remainder of my lifetime.

Bradley Burchfield (32:09):

Those are the Madill mountains. Those are the Madilll mountains. Yeah, we would've had the new warehouse done when you got here for our pallet goods. But everything that the family has given constant reinvestment in this company, and that's really important from the storage of our product. So everything's on concrete now. So from one end of the facility to the next, it's all concrete. Everything's on concrete, not gravel.

Lynsey McAnally (32:33):

I'll cut that part out.

Bradley Burchfield (32:35):

No, no, you're good. We used to be on gravel, Lynsey, but we listened to our customers. They had gravel in their pallets, they had things like that. So that's one thing that we value is feedback not only from the end user, but our customers that have it. And their big deal was gravel in the pallets, gravel in the panels. We listened to that and they made investments into concrete and then some of our packaging and tarps and things like that. So we moved to cellophane wrap and then the cellophane wrap was it gets sun damaged if it sets out there for too long. So we built a whole brand new warehouse just to put our pallet goods in because you listened to those end users. Because if you're paying a premium for wire goods and that's any wire good out there, it doesn't matter what brand it is, you want it to look nice, new and pretty when you're buying it. And it also helps your selling point. So when you're looking at it in the store, you want it to look as best as it can.

Lynsey McAnally (33:32):

Most of our listeners are, well, I would say all of our listeners are very customer oriented in one way or the other, whether they're selling bulls, whether they're marketing feeder calves, whether we're selling direct to consumer beef, all very customer focused. And so we can appreciate seeing that in another industry or another facet of our own industry. We can recognize greatness when we see it, I suppose. But we've talked a lot about the agriculture side, and I think you mentioned a little bit earlier some of the construction aspects or facets of Oklahoma Steel and Wire. Can you talk a little bit about the more industrial side and if I'm not mistaken, maybe some of the mining products that you all produce?

Bradley Burchfield (34:21):

Yeah, so that's called a mine mesh. I'm not very versed in that side.

Lynsey McAnally (34:27):

Completely fine. We can do a brief overview. I just think it's really neat that that is another part of the OKBrand family.

Bradley Burchfield (34:36):

Yeah, so our industrial department is a very integral part of the okay brand set of companies because all the transportation, whether you're taking your cattle to the cell barn or you're bringing your crops in to sell or even delivering our wire products to our customers, the roadways, the bridges, things like that. A lot of our industrial products go into that because a lot of, if it's going to be government funded, they want to use buy American-made steel and they want it to be specked properly. So we have domestic manufacturers such as ourself that can melt the steel and make the mesh and things like that. For ODoT, all the Department of Transportations as well as our fencing, there are certain specs that DOT has for fencing along highways and things like that that they want to spec. So mining mesh is the same thing, but we have a lot of different variations that go into a lot of different, any kind of mesh you see out on the roads or the barriers between roads they call it, they're kind of angled dividers that they'll pour concrete onto and form them up that way where we bend them here and things like that.

So I would say the industrial side of our business is very important, just like the ag side. I mean you're two different facets of the wire industry that go to whole different applications, but both very important to us.

Lynsey McAnally (36:07):

Sure. And I love that example you gave of, I think it can be really easy sometimes for us to think, well, that's a separate industry, but everything interconnects. And when we think about creating these products for roadways, that's how we get our product anywhere. Just like none of us could do our jobs if it weren't for having good fencing supplies. I think that's not an arguable point to me because we were talking just a little bit earlier about the importance of convincing and sleeping good at night, knowing that your livestock, hopefully, unless they figured a way to MacGyver themselves out of where they need to be off the highway and safe when you lay your head down to rest at night. So very, very important I think to make those connections. Again, talking about some of the things that are going on in the world right now, do you expect that the tariffs or international trade agreements and or disagreements could affect fencing sales moving forward?

Bradley Burchfield (37:18):

Yeah, I mean obviously we have things that fluctuate in our costing that aren't just dictated on the steel because we can control that a lot more because we melt. But there are other inputs that do rise with things. But the tariffs, we're obviously advocates for buying domestic products. We are a domestic company. We have families out here that they support themselves because of people buying domestic products. So we support domestic manufacturing anywhere and everywhere that we can. And I think that's really important. So the tariffs don't super affect us now. They affect it that we're having to service a lot more industry because people are not able to get their imports and things like that. But we're very conscious of servicing customers that have been with us for a long time because we have a lot of different customers throughout the us. We service box stores like you were saying earlier, but we also service mom and pop feed stores, co-ops and things like that throughout the US that that's a big part of their business is fencing. That's what helps pay for the local, their kids baseball team or the local FFA. What you're saying is like a chain of reaction between all that and how it all intermingles and we want to make sure to take care of those customers. The tariffs don't really, I would say affect us. They do to a certain extent on certain inputs, but not really in the grand scheme of the overall finished good. But we want to support those customers that have supported us for so long.

Lynsey McAnally (39:02):

And I would imagine that if anything, you guys are going to see more of a demand for American-made products as some of those things come to a head. Can you touch on how OKBrand is marketed to farmers and ranchers and where your line of products can be purchased?

Bradley Burchfield (39:20):

So we don't sell direct. That's one big thing that we do. And most people, and it's not from a point of arrogance, like you cannot buy our product directly from us. It comes more from a pricing structure and a volume structure. Obviously, we melt 60 tons of steel every 45 minutes to an hour.

Lynsey McAnally (39:39):

That's a lot of product.

Bradley Burchfield (39:40):

That's a lot of product. And that's every hour, 24/7. And we can't, unfortunately, we cannot move that direct one pallet at a time. We have to move volume through stores, which brings the cost down. And I know that seems a little bit backwards, but it's how it works with steel because you got to move so much volume and we can service our customers a lot better. You can go pick up that pallet of fence you need, it's Thursday or whatever and you need to build fence on Saturday. Well obviously you don't have time for us to ship you one pallet, but you can go to that local store and find it at a good price point and be able to pick it up and do your fence. That's one of the biggest serviceability sides of it.

Lynsey McAnally (40:21):

It's handy to be able to run out to the farm store that you have an existing relationship with and trust that they'll either have that in stock or they can get it in stock pretty quickly if they don't.

Bradley Burchfield (40:35):

Absolutely. And how we market it, we're doing more social media. It may not seem like it, but I've done more than one podcast and we're trying to get more information out there. The industry tours, we've done multiple cattlemen's associations, Farm Bureau associations where they get groups and bring in for tours. We go to a lot of end user farm shows, which also help talk about our product. But then a social media just has such a far outreach, so we're really trying to delve into that. We're not great at it because it's hard to make fencing fun. I would say it's like trying to sell hard work to people. So we're trying every avenue of marketing that we can because I'll tell you, there are a lot of new people that I wouldn't say necessarily farm and ranch, but that are going into the homesteading. They might buy a couple of cows or they might grow their own vegetables or whatever.

And that's a really big portion of the business. We're starting to see a lot of smaller ones. I would say back in the day they're needing fencing and things like that. So we're trying to market that and get the information out there because we want to make information accessible to the point where if you're not sure what you need, you can find that information out because not all fences work for the same application. And we want people to know we don't want you to spend a much of money and it'd be the wrong product for what you're trying to do. We're trying to market our product and make it accessible as well as make information accessible and how to install it, what products go for what livestock and what applications.

Lynsey McAnally (42:11):

Awesome. And one of the things that I don't remember, I think it was you that made this statement when we did our tour, but you said as much fencing as we've produced, you would think that there would be nothing else to fence, and yet there's still a high demand for your product.

Bradley Burchfield (42:30):

There is. And I still drive down the road every day, whether it be on the way to work or if I'm out on the road on a sales trip, I drive down the road and all I see is old fences with as much fence as we've produced and sold over 40 plus years, almost 50, you would think all you would see is new fences, but you don't, A lot of it's either been there for a long time. It's large tracks of property where I think you see a lot of it is probably going into splitting up large tracks of property in a smaller 5 to 10 acre tracks is what we're seeing a lot of. So we're selling a lot of fencing. We still sell a lot of fencing. It's just an interesting thought when you think about it, how much we've sold and you really don't see it a whole lot.

Lynsey McAnally (43:20):

Yeah, it was just when you said that, I thought, oh my gosh, he's right. That was not something I thought about, but you are exactly correct. So what have we forgotten? Anything that you want to talk about that we haven't touched on?

Bradley Burchfield (43:36):

I wouldn't say anything that we've left out. I think just from the team here at OKBrand, we kind of talked about it in this last CLA class, Lynsey, we actually had somebody stand up and they talk about the OKBrand. And to them it's a brand. It was just like the brand you put on your livestock. It's a brand, it's something that you stand behind and something that it tells a story about you and they associate it. It's not just a name. It is not just a name for us, it is a brand, it is who we are and it's all those people behind that brand that are here manufacturing this quality product that mean everything to that industry. And I think that was very important and it was something that we've probably never really thought of, but they said the okay, brand is a brand.

It is not just a name out there where we still have handshake agreements on all of our product, like our field fence on the back of it, it says handshake agreement. And that's basically saying we don't need a piece of paper to tell us to take care of our customers. Something's wrong. And I think that's something that we've lost a lot in the industry, but we're slowly trying to bring back and bring light to about who we are and how we do business and the people that work here. But at the end of the day, we want to say thank you to all the farmers and ranchers for feeding and clothing, everybody in the world and especially in the United States. And we want to appreciate every bit of business that we get because at the end of the day, we're the last fully integrated, family owned wire mill in the US that does it from start to finish. And that's really important to us. And we just want to say thank you to each and every one of you.

Lynsey McAnally (45:20):

Thank you for taking the time to share the story behind MidAmerica as well as Oklahoma Steel & Wire. And it's one thing to believe in shopping American made products and quite another to see the effects of a business like the OKBrand family on its community and our industry as a whole, but with all the uncertainty and negativity that is out and about in the world right now. And I know we've all heard plenty of it. I have one more question for you, and this one is probably a personal one, but we always like to end Angus at Work on a positive note. So what is one thing happening in your life personally or professionally that you are thankful for?

Bradley Burchfield (46:01):

We're growing our market and we're being able to tell our story in a positive manner. People think of steel as a dirty old industry. I think that's something that we're really putting a positive spin on because like we've said down there, Lynsey, at our melt shop, we're a zero discharge facility here and a lot of people don't really think that. And we're turning into a positive note on steel and agriculture because we're stewards of the land and the livestock at the end of the day. And we're the same thing with the environment here. We try to do everything that we can to make a clean product the best that we can, and we're turning a positive note on domestic manufacturing because at the end of the day, it's not just cost, it's not just one certain thing, but it's a positive note on bringing domestic manufacturing back and doing it in a clean, effective manner.

Lynsey McAnally (46:52):

I love that very, very much. Well, Bradley, thank you so much for taking the time and hanging with us through some technical difficulties on my side. But thank you so much for joining us and I am very much looking forward to our audience hearing this episode.

Bradley Burchfield (47:09):

Absolutely. Thank you very much. And like I said, from the OKBrand family, we really appreciate each and every one of the Farmers ranchers out there and hopefully we've earned your business and if not, you let us know what we can do to do it.

Lynsey McAnally (47:21):

Awesome. Thank you so much! 

 Listeners, for more information on making Angus work for you, check out the Angus Beef Bulletin and the Angus Beef Bulletin EXTRA. You can subscribe to both publications in the show notes. If you have questions or comments, let us know at abbeditorial@angus.org and we would appreciate it if you would leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode with any other profit-minded cattlemen. Thanks for listening. This has been Angus at Work!