Retail Dealer Thinks in Tenns of Service

Bv H.J. Bennett Director of Promotionol Sales, Columbia Steel Compony

The slogan of the Geo. E. Ream Company indicates the progressive attitude of California's retail lumber dealers, as well as of the Geo. E. Ream Company. For Mr. Ream knows that the retail dealer of today is thinking in terms of service-service foi himself when he needs it. and service to his customers.

One of the most telling indications of this modern attitude is the increasing variety of items and materials stockid by retail dealers. Nowadays a prospective builder can buy from his retail lumber dealer, not only the lumber for a house or barn, but also the nails to build it with. steel roofing and siding sheets to make it weatherproof, paint to protect it, and even the fencing to erect around it----complete with steel fence posts and gates. If the retail dealer does not have exactly the materials specified in stock, a telephone call brings them to him from his jobber almost within the hour.

It is probably partly because of this recognition of the importance of service that the George E. Ream Company has announced themselves as distributors of USS Steel Products. For not only are these products stocked in Cali- fornia in convenient Columbia Steel Company warehouses, ready for instant delivery, but most of them are manufactured in Columbia's California mills. r Street, Los Angeles, which they will occupy qlter Jqnuary 15, 1938

The Columbia Steel Company, a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation, is very much a western institution. It operates two steel mills in California, one at Torrance and one at Pittsburg, a wire rope and wire fence factory in San Francisco, and coal and iron mines and a blast furnace in Utah.

Including the personnel of its various Coast offices, the company employs approximately 5,500 people at an annual payroll of $9,600,00O.

The products manufactured for use by the building trades include a wide variety of steel sheets, structural shapes and reinforcing bars; nails, tacks, staples and barbed wire; and woven wire fence and netting for farms, highways, residences and factories.

The Columbia Steel Company, in addition to being a steel manufacturer, also acts as Pacific Coast distributor for other United States Steel Corporation subsidiaries.

"Friendly Dealers Service" Equipment

Sqlegmen's ccrs identily the "Friendly Deolerg Service"