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(210) 308-5800
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Volume 18
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Number 5
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MAY 2016
Beyer’s big picture
Centennial metal
L-R: Pat and Perry Beyer along with their brother Jeff Beyer have brought their business up from a handful of employees to almost 250 today.
L-R: Jeff, Jack, Jordan and David Vexler are celebrating a centennial milestone as the fourth generation of their family’s company, Monterrey Iron & Metal.
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n more than 25 years of business, Beyer Boys has grown significantly, changing and evolving its operations and services, constantly adding people and trucks, without ever leaving its original home. With his background in plumbing, Perry Beyer decided to start up the plumbing business, and it was just him and a helper. Then, Perry’s brothers, Pat Beyer and Jeff Beyer, brought the air conditioning side to the company through an acquisition, which also brought in eight employees. Beyer Boys has two departments, Beyer Plumbing, which does construction and service, and Beyer Mechanical, which does new construction and ser-
vice. The HVAC side also breaks down into commercial and residential divisions. Having once been about 90 percent commercial, the company got more into the residential side 15 years ago and has since taken off to become its own division. “As an owner, you get to see the gift of watching something grow,” says Pat. “You have something very small, and then you put all your blood, sweat and tears in it, and probably today, we’re enjoying some of those benefits of working hard when we were younger. It’s been a blessing to see something go from what it was to where it is today, starting with hardly any employees to having close to
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o properly celebrate its 100th year in business, Monterrey Iron & Metal began work on a couple of projects three or four years ago that have recently been completed and will now enhance the scrap metal processing facility. One project was the installation of a new shredder, which David Vexler, who oversees major accounts and online purchases for his family’s company, describes as “a 4400 HP beast that can turn a car into baseball-sized metal chunks in a matter of seconds.” The other project was a downstream sorting system that segregates multiple types of metal through complex computer-driven screen processes. This maximizes their metal recovery.
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“In the past if a company were to get 85% recovery on a material throughout processing, the company would have been happy,” Vexler says of changes in the industry. “Nowadays, scrapyards shoot for 98 to 99-percent recovery. Losing material means lost profits as well as wasted resources. With the aid of computers, we can monitor our equipment’s efficiency and perform preemptive maintenance. “Aside from the piles of metal and the men and women that work with it, the modern ‘scrap metal processing facility’ has little resemblance to the ‘junk yard’ of 100 years ago. From processing equipment to magnets and material handlers, things have changed by leaps and continued on Page 24
A steak on the northwest side
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isitors to the La Cantera area can dine at the new Ruth’s Chris Steak House at Eilan, and Structure Tone Southwest was the general contractor that brought the famous restaurant’s new look and location to Northwest San Antonio. The project was an 8,500-sf interior finish out and some exterior building alterations at 17803 La Cantera Terrace, Suite 8110. The final contract value was $2.9 million with substantial completion Nov. 10, 2015. The completion schedule was only 16 weeks, which included construction and time for the client to set up equipment and train staff for the November opening. “The whole process was a challenge simply because of the timeframe and getting equipment,” explains David W. Baker, project manager. One example he gives involving the kitchen equipment is that the broilers are
Structure Tone Southwest completed the new Ruth’s Chris Steak House, located at Eilan along I-10, on a tight and complex schedule.
specially made for Ruth’s Chris and had to be built, delivered and connected in that timeframe. He also mentions that the light fixtures, which he estimates can take anywhere from 90 to 120 days to be delivered, had to arrive and be installed in that timeframe. The HVAC equipment also presented a similar challenge. Though coordinating the subcontractors on this tight schedule presented its own challenge, Baker credits their subs with working with them on their scheduling and organization to ensure they were not working on top of each other. Sometimes, achieving this required contractors to work evenings and weekends. The intricate design with high-end finishes was a progressive open floor plan, a new concept and design for Ruth’s Chris. With this being the first of the steak house’s restaurants to have this floor plan continued on Page 24