MEMBER PROFILE
Continuous Innovation for More than 80 Years How Huber Supply Company has evolved through four generations of leadership BY STEVE GUGLIELMO
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ost companies that have survived for more than 80 years look unrecognizable compared to their beginnings. Perhaps no company better represents that massive transformation than Mason City, Iowa’s Huber Supply Company. Huber Supply Company was formed in 1939, when Elmer Smith’s boat broke down on Lake Erie, stranding him in Port Clinton, Ohio. It was there that Smith met Nelson Schmidt, who worked for his father at a boat repair shop and was able to fix Elmer’s boat over the weekend. Elmer, who was working for Smith Equipment at the time, told Nelson to look him up if he was ever in Minneapolis and needed a job. Nelson came to Minneapolis to take Elmer up on the offer and found a room with George Huber’s grandmother, only a couple of blocks from Smith Equipment.
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It was then that George and Nelson hit it off and began to talk about starting their own oxygen-acetylene route in Minnesota. At the same time as Nelson and George were acquiring a truck to start their route, Smith Company had come out with an electric welder. However, Elmer didn’t like the ventilated top of the welder and asked Nelson to make a better one. As Nelson and Elmer finalized the welder, George secured oxygen and acetylene cylinders for the route, and the company began to take shape. However, tragedy soon struck the fledgling company, as Nelson was tragically killed in a car accident in Watertown, South Dakota. “After Nelson passed away, my great grandfather continued to grow the business,” says Huber Supply President and fourth-generation leader Rodney Huber. “The company really
