Today we’d like to introduce you to Lance Thrailkill.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Lance. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
All Metals Fabricating was founded in 1953, and my grandfather, Bill Thrailkill, purchased the company in 1978. Joined by my father and our current President, Billy Thrailkill, they quadrupled the sales of AMF in the first year. From there they continued to grow the company, primarily by building parts for the rapidly growing telecommunications industry in the 80’s and 90’s. By 2000 we had outgrown our 3 buildings in Richardson, so we built and moved into our current facility in Allen, TX.
That same year the telecommunications industry had a massive recession, so we began diversifying significantly and increasing our capabilities to include powder coating, machining and electro-mechanical assemblies. Today we proudly serve virtually every industry including but not limited to: medical, banking, postal sorting, military, aerospace, food & commercial kitchen, oil & gas, alternative energy, as well as many OEM’s. (Original Equipment Manufacturers) We have pushed towards providing complete manufacturing solutions and pride ourselves in partnering with our customers from design to delivery. Partnering with customers in the design stages has helped us to win more business and helped our customers be more successful by designing their products with manufacturability in mind.
Has it been a smooth road?
Our toughest time was in 2000 when our sales dropped 50% after we had moved into our new building and purchased a new laser that was our largest equipment investment at that time. That year was one of the two times that we have ever had to make any layoffs in our 39 years under our family’s ownership.
Our biggest current struggle is meeting customers short lead times and competing with international pricing. We have had to continually adapt to technology by investing in new equipment and automation, which allows us to build parts more efficiently and effectively.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We are a contract manufacturer that specializes in sheet metal fabricating, machining and electro-mechanical assemblies. Our capabilities include: engineering/product design, laser cutting, punch presses, bending (press brakes), welding and robotic welding, mill and lathe work, hardware insertion, powder coating, silk screening, cabling and electro-mechanical assembly. We also have strategic partners that allow us to offer a variety of other services so that we can be a complete manufacturing solutions provider, which is one of the things that we pride ourselves in. We are most proud of our rich history of having the utmost integrity, being dependable and quality driven, as well as having loyal employees that we treat as our family. We are known for having the best benefits package in the industry and for caring about our employees more than our competitors.
Doing so has allowed us to have an average employee tenure of 15+ years, which in turn helps us to better serve our customers with consistency in quality and dependability. Our saying is that we view our employees as family and our customers and vendors as our partners. Doing whatever it takes to meet our customers’ needs is one of the many things that sets us apart, and our customers find comfort in knowing that they can always count on us.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Yes, the DFW metroplex is a great place for a manufacturing company for many reasons.
Being central in the United States allows us to ship parts to both coasts for very reasonable prices.
And our lower taxes and more business friendly governance gives us the ability to be more competitively priced than other states. DFW is also a major hub for the telecommunication industry, which is one of the reasons that there are so many manufacturing companies in the metroplex. DFW has an incredibly diverse range and abundance of companies that gives us the opportunity to find new opportunities regularly.
Source: View original interview in Voyage Dallas Magazine
