Vern Lewis Welding

I appreciate your taking time to look at Vern Lewis Welding Supply Inc. as a supplier. I wanted to offer just a little history on Vern Lewis and our company.

I was a district manager for Forney Welders in Harlan Iowa from 1964 to 1969. I sold to farmers and small businesses. I moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1969 as a regional manager for Forney. I had some rude awakenings building a business in Arizona. I couldn’t get any welder financing in Arizona as I had with the Bank and Avco Finance in Iowa. I hired Ron Ruch for sales and we worked together (he is operating his own business as Ruch Welding Supply, a portable route sales, to this day with Vern Lewis as a supplier).

Forney supplied us with welding rod made by Airco and sold under the Murex label. In the early 70’s there was a rod shortage because of a shortage of wire to make the rod. Lincoln Electric had ample supply on hand and never suffered because of the shortage so I contacted the Lincoln district manager for rod. He sent me to his best suppliers to buy rod from them. About a year later I contacted him again and he said he would set me up direct IF I could buy twelve 225 welders and 1000 pounds of rod, which was exactly what I needed!! The surprising thing was I was still working out of a storage shed at home.

A short time later I was able to rent a warehouse…an old three room house on the highway in Avondale. A year later I was able to buy it – approximately 60’ x 100’ lot with the small house. About this time Forney cut out their direct sales program and rather than stay with them and sell to dealers like hardware stores and auto supply houses, Ron and I elected to keep on like we were with Lincoln, Tweco and a few other companies that we had developed a relationship with.

I stumbled on a welder in Wilcox that was putting on used carbide buttons from well drilling rigs on ripper points as Arizona soil is extremely hard and had to be ripped up to absorb water for planting cotton, etc. After finding out this could extend the life of ripper points as much as ten times, I found a source to purchase the new carbide inserts, bought John Deere ripper points and installed these on the point with hardfacing - checkerboard design on the upper part of the shank. Customers really liked this and we had to go into the hardfacing business!!

At this time I had installed a 40 x 40 steel pole style roof over the old house (warehouse). and a year later we put walls around it and opened up our first retail store. We expanded to Phoenix in 1982 and since then we have maintained a solid relationship as a Lincoln distributor, added the Hobart line in 1982, became a Miller distributor in 2000 and added numerous other manufacturers to our product line.

I bought a property next to my Avondale store in 1995 and expanded that location to include a larger retail store, our fill plant and our corporate headquarters with the Phoenix store still including the purchasing department.

In January of 2007 we purchased Yavapai Welding Supply in Prescott Valley, opened a store in Mesa and an affiliate store in Wickenburg. Joe Almand stayed on and ran the new Vern Lewis Welding Supply store in Prescott Valley until this January. Now we have all Vern Lewis trained personnel in the Prescott Valley store.

We have 46 good employees to serve you-Phoenix, Avondale, Prescott Valley, Mesa and Wickenburg. With all of these phenomenal resources, I no longer have a defined job. I do continue to be available daily for consulting and assistance.

Regards,

Vern Lewis

President