In 1975, Tommy Dulaney, plant manager for Bates Steel in Meridian, Mississippi, decided to strike out on his own. He started fabricating structural steel in a 12,000-square-foot shop that had formerly been a chicken house. Dulaney promised Jack Bates, his old boss, that he would not take employees from Bates Steel, and he honored that commitment.
More than four decades later, Structural Steel Services, Inc., operates six plants in Meridian totaling more than a million square feet. One of those plants is the former Bates Steel facility, which Dulaney bought in 1995. We employ 300 workers, many of them longtime employees or the children of longtime employees. After doing extensive work in Southeast Asia in our early years, we have spent most of the last two decades focusing on industrial projects throughout the United States. The company has annual revenue of $100 million.