Paul Springer was fresh out of college in the early 1970s and enjoying a career at Diamond Shamrock, where he helped create Dacromet, one of the first products that used a zinc and chromium coating application.
Paul Springer“I had a pretty good job there,” he says. “I enjoyed what I was doing.”
But his tennis party in those days, George Kappas Sr. from Erieview Metal Treating in Cleveland, kept telling Springer he didn’t seem that happy in his work. He encouraged him to look for a change of scenery and maybe even strike out on his own as an owner of a finishing and coating operation.
“I thought he was crazy,” says Springer, the owner of SpringCo Metal Coating. “I was in the lab. I didn’t even know what a business owner did.”
Becoming a Business owner in 1977
Kappas kept insisting to Springer each week after tennis when they would grab a hamburger, and eventually, Springer bought a used, 1,300-foot conveyorized finishing system from a closed plant in 1977 that was so larger — it also had a 6-stage washer, large spray booths, and a bake oven — that it took 20 huge trucks to carry it all a space Springer rented, and Lake Erie Metal Coatings was in business.
Fourth-five years later, SpringCo provides several coating services, including electrocoating, powder coating, rack zinc plating, and phosphating on a sprawling 11-acre site with a 250,000-square-foot facility in Cleveland.
The 74-year-old Springer still makes his presence known at the SpringCo site several days a week, although he usually drops by in the afternoon to see how things are running. Several of his children now run the organization, but after a 50+-year career in the finishing and coating industry, Springer still likes to walk amongst the powder coaters and the ecoat lines.
“The managers here have developed so well, they really don’t need me much,” he says. “Luckily, I have found other things to do with my life.”
Some of the Largest Ecoat and Powder Lines in North America
With more than 260 employees, SpringCo has some of the largest electrocoat and powder coating lines operating in North America, where they coat and finish automotive parts from some of the biggest OEMs in the industry.
The ecoat line is one of the largest in the U.S. at 2,200 feet in length and is capable of coating parts up to 90 inches long and up to 500 pounds.
Although work has slowed a bit after the pandemic and the supply chain issues with chips in the automotive sector, for many years, SpringCo would see more than 200 semi tractor-trailers pulling out of their loading docks, many carrying newly coated tire rims, axles, and other parts headed for car assembly plants throughout Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and beyond.
“We were down about 25 percent during the pandemic and after, but it is starting to come back,” Springer says.
Looking back on his half-century career in finishing, Springer says he was influenced by many who helped him early in his career, especially those in the Cleveland area. He says he relied heavily on the advice and support of people like John Weyls and Williams Saas from R.O. Hull & Co., which became Rohco several years later.
Stop and Smell the Roses
“John and Bill would help me do my salt-spray testing because I wasn’t big enough to have my own,” Springer says. “One day, Bill gave me some great advice, which was ‘Stop and smell the roses.’ I was a pretty hard charger back then, and Bill was trying to tell me to step back.”
Back then, Springer says he used to do it all: unloaded all the trucks, titrated the tanks, oversaw the workers hanging parts, and more. The advice from Saas is something he never forgot.
“Bill became a friend for a long time,” Springer says. “But he gave me something to think about.”
