November 12, 2003
The Muskegon Chronicle
By Dick Davies

Ken Stewart has always loved the art of designing and building things, and then seeing them work.

Stewart owns Stewart Engineering & Sales Co. at 2140 Aurora in Muskegon Township. He, his two sons and a dozen employees build overhead cranes and related equipment for business and industry throughout the country.

An engineering graduate of the University of Michigan, Stewart worked as a project engineer for several years at the former Dresser Industries in Muskegon before being laid off in 1972.

That layoff, however, was not a devastating blow. "I had kind of planned on going into business for myself anyway, so I thought now's the time," he said.

For the first 11 years, Stewart worked out of his residence in Fruitport Township, traveling around the state selling his products and subcontracting work orders with Muskegon-area steel industries. In 1983, he moved into an office and
warehouse on Getty Street.

In 1996, outgrowing cramped space, he put his creative talents to work and designed a new 13,000-square-foot building. "I decided to build my own building after my two sons went to college at engineering school at Michigan Tech," he said. "I thought about it a long time, for about 20 years. It's a satisfying thing to think about something and then build it."

With his sons -- Jim, 35, and Mike, 33 -- Stewart began assembling cranes inside his building that range from smaller, hand-push quarter-ton units to 60-ton giants used in heavy industry. "We buy the components, then assemble the cranes," he said. "We assemble a complete crane on site."

Once assembled, Stewart loads and ships the cranes on large, flat-bed trucks to his buyers.

The Stewart line of products includes a wall crane welding machine and a new Stewart Beam Rollover that he created -- a 5-ton unit that can turn over huge steel beams used to make cranes.

Still another invention, with patent pending, doesn't even have a name. Stewart has created a unit that can efficiently dump barrels of scrap metal, steel and other industrial products into a furnace. "It can pick up any container and flip it over," he said.

At 60, Stewart says he has no intention of retiring. "It's still fun. I enjoy it a lot," he said. "In fact, I've always enjoyed it. It's just an added plus to get paid for it."

The crane-manufacturing industry is highly competitive and almost always in a state of change, according to Stewart. Because of that, he says he has no interest in enlarging his business, because there are advantages in being small.

One of them, he says, is service to his customers. "A smaller business like mine can be closer to a customer than a bigger corporation," he said. "It's a very competitive industry ... we're getting a lot of foreign competition."

Stewart says another advantage in being small is that his company suffers less negative impact when the economy falters. "The capital-improvement industry has very steep ups and downs," he said. "Being small, we can smooth it out when it shrinks and expands."

Stewart's two sons travel much of the state of Michigan visiting buyers and potential buyers, while Stewart these days contents himself at staying closer to home. "I divided up most of my customers with my kids, keeping a few of the older ones for myself," he said.

The Stewart family also is represented at the work site by Stewart's wife, Joyce, who does the company accounting. A third child, daughter Brenda Schluentz, is a part-time civil engineer for a small Muskegon-area company. "We'll find a place for her someday. She's producing grandchildren now," Stewart said.

Stewart marvels over how his industry has evolved with computerization. He started using a computer-automated-design machine in 1991 and now does virtually all of his planning and designing with the unit.

"It can make a perfect drawing," he said. "It takes the place of a dollar-an-hour draftsman of 80 years ago. We used to have to have a designer, a detailer and a tracer -- all those different job positions."

FAXBOX:

* Who: Ken Stewart, owner of Stewart Engineering & Sales Co, 2140 Aurora, Muskegon Township.

* What: Crane design, construction and sales.

* Phone: 767-2140.