Welding, welding repair, pipe and tube bending and metal fabrication — nobody does it better than Metal Services of Blooming Prairie, Inc.

As John Wayne used to say in the movies, “No braggin.’ Just fact.”

“In a world of bells and whistles, Metal Services offers four timeless, basic elements you can bank on,” the company’s president Dennis Heimerman pledges.

Two years ago, the firm moved into a new state-of-the art, 33,250-square foot facility in the expanded Blooming Prairie industrial park.

“Basically, it was just myself and two other guys when we got started in Blooming Prairie,” said Heimerman.

The business was originally ag repair only and done in a collection of five buildings off U.S. Highway 218 South and behind the Dairy Queen restaurant.

“I worked at a couple of shops, then factories at Owatonna and another shop in Blooming Prairie that did both production and repair. The last job I had before going on my own was for Denny Magnuson. My background was in both production and repair,” he said. “I went into the business thinking I was just going to be in the ag repair shop mostly, but if you remember how farming was in the 1980s, it got tough fast.”

When Heimerman got started, farmers wanted a shop where metal could be cut and bent.

“What drove us into getting into fabricating for other people, other than farm repairs, was just how tough the 1980s really were,” he said. “We had to find something else to do.”

It’s a measure of Heimerman’s character that he weathered the farm financial crisis of the 1980s on his own.

“I started pounding on the door of factories and writing letters and looking for other things to do,” he said.

The demand for his company’s services grew and then grew some more.

“Pretty soon we started getting known for getting things done,” he said. “We started hiring people with more skills in certain areas and we kept up with our repair work which we continue to do today.”

The repair facility (the original Metal Services site) maintains a workforce of four people. Harvey Farr, who has been with Heimerman for 24 years, is the supervisor.

Two years ago, Heimerman made the move into the new industrial park facility by necessity.

“We were in five buildings at the old site and we just had to consolidate things,” Heimerman said. “The pressure today on manufacturing is on being lean and it’s hard to be lean when you’re moving parts from building to building.

“We said we needed to get production under one roof to attract more and bigger and better customers,” he said.

Wade Nelson is supervisor of the operations facility, where operations and repair work in tandem.

“The businesses were separated physically,” he said. “We (the operations facility) fabricate parts for them, when they need parts. We haven’t duplicated any equipment,” he said.

Heimerman is also the company sales and marketing executive. His son, Ryan, is the firm’s general manager.

The firm is a “contract manufacturer” or job shop in its new facility. “We are doing parts for other people,” Heimerman said.

Clients include McNeilus Trucking (the Oshkosh firm) at Dodge Center; Viracom at Owatonna, SPX; Winger Corp.; and other area manufacturers.

The firm’s clients come largely from a 100-mile radius of Blooming Prairie.

“Eighty percent of our work is production work,” he said. “Twenty percent is repair.

“There are less farmers in the ag sector than there were 20 years ago and as agriculture as evolved so have we had to evolve in our business,” he said.

Today, the firm has 26-full and part-time employees.

Reaching the silver anniversary milestone is an important accomplishment for Heimerman, particularly after weathering the farm financial crisis of the 1980s, various recessions and now the near-depression America’s economy faces.

What does the businessman see in the year ahead?’

“I think it’s going to be tough just to maintain where we are today,” he said. “This thing (the tough economy) came on to our customers as fast as anything I’ve ever seen.”

“McNeilus, Viracon, just about our whole customer base … the whole industry has gone through some slow downs and we are feeling the impact of that,” he said.

“We’re still on a plan to grow. When we moved into this building two years ago, our goal was to be two times greater than our sales were at the time in five years,” he said. “Now, it’s going to be hard to stay on that path.”

One bright spot on the horizon may be the wind energy industry, still growing despite other economic downturns elsewhere.

How does Heimerman describe himself on the eve of the silver anniversary of the company he founded?

“I’m just plain cautious,” he said. “I know we are going to have to work really hard to find some new things and it’s not going to be easy.”

“By the same token, we’re going to take really good care of what we’re doing best now,” he said.

Metal Services of Blooming Prairie, Inc. is located at 380 Sixth Ave. S.E.

For more information, call (507) 583-2144 or go online to www.metal-services.com or email dennyh@metal-servic es.com