Forged in Faith, Friendship
It reads like the classic American success story. Three seemingly ordinary guys getting together with an idea to start a business from scratch.
Committing their own money, expertise and energy to the endeavor, supported by faith and family, they survive the early lean years and overcome a hand-to-mouth existence.
The tiny startup company launched from the proverbial garage on a farm eventually takes root and grows. In time, the risk and sacrifice is rewarded.
From its humble beginnings, the business prospers, offering jobs for generations, quality and craftsmanship for customers, and a revitalization of the community.
The story of Penn United Technologies, based in Jefferson Township, continues to unfold.
Now one of Butler County's largest employers, boasting a workforce of nearly 700, the precision manufacturer and leader in the tool and die industry is gearing up to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year.
At the core of that company's legacy are its founding fathers: Carl Jones, Charles Barton and Robert Becker, who have all since died.In 1970, the trio worked at Oberg Industries in Buffalo Township, a tool and die maker.Jones ran the stamping area/press room. Becker was manager of the die assembly area. Barton toiled in the office quoting work.The three were not just co-workers, but friends. Jones and Barton lived on family-owned farms in Jefferson and Buffalo townships, respectively, and Becker lived in Saxonburg.Little did they know, but their workday lives would soon be turned upside down, initiated by a passing conversation between Jones and his brother-in-law Bob Montgomery, who was working for another machine shop in the valley.“As the story goes,” says Bill Jones, Carl's youngest of four children, who serves as president of Penn United, “Uncle Bob came down one summer day while dad was on the farm tractor.”Any idle talk between the two took a serious tone when Montgomery suggested Carl consider starting his own business.“You know, Carl, why don't you think about doing this for yourself?” Montgomery proposed, according to Bill. “You could build a better business than where you're at.”A man of entrepreneurial spirit himself, Montgomery would also start his own rental business.
Carl took his brother-in-law's thought to heart and before long, he was sharing the idea with longtime friends Barton and Becker.“Those three men actually had some kind of camaraderie before they did this because when they first started Penn United they did everything together,” Bill remembers. “Every Friday night they'd show up on our farm and we'd race go-carts.“That was just one of the fun things we'd do as families. The Bartons, Beckers and Joneses, we all grew up together as kids and did activities together.”But Carl selected Barton and Becker not only out of friendship. To start a company, he would need partners with different skill sets. A gifted tool maker, Carl knew Becker had a talent for putting together and repairing dies. Barton provided the required office know-how.By the end of 1970, Barton and Becker started showing up at the Jones home to discuss the pending venture. Bill and his siblings had no idea what was being planned.
“They had several meetings at our house when we were little,” Bill recalls. “We didn't know what was going on. We just saw these men there.”In time, the three aspiring businessmen reached a mutual decision: Let's do it.Looking back, Bill believes that the Christian devotion of the men was key in making such a bold move.“All three were faithful men,” he says, “and their faith got them through a lot of hard times the first couple of years, that's for sure.”Carl and Barton leveraged their farms and Becker his house to secure finances for their startup.“All of them actually leveraged everything they had to get started,” Bill says.He credited a good friend of Barton's, Archie Gordon, with providing the founders with expertise in financial and tax matters, and helping set up the company's organization.
Once the decision was made for the new business and there was no turning back, Carl and Becker immediately left Oberg. Within a week or two of that, Barton left, too.Their now former not-so-benevolent boss, the late Don Oberg, was not pleased, to put it mildly.“Don really went over the edge,” Bill says, “and started threatening others.” Oberg was afraid he could lose other employees, although he did not take his then rival company-in-the-making seriously.But those fears would soon be realized as one of Oberg's salesmen jumped ship. More would join the exodus, and enlisted with the new enterprise, Penn United Technologies, which was officially founded May 4, 1971.The company began with a converted three-stall garage on the Jones farm, with Carl the president, Becker vice president and Barton secretary/treasurer.The early days for the men were beyond difficult. Money was tighter than a cork in a wine bottle for the founders and their families.“We'd be leaving for school and mom didn't have a nickel to hand us for lunch to get a milk,” Bill remembers. “But dad had silver nickels and dimes stored up and she'd go in and pull out those.”
He says his mother, Kathryn, dutifully supported Carl's decision to start the business.“She was the kind of woman who would follow dad, whatever dad said we were going to do,” he says. “She was a wonderfully faithful person herself. She was really the glue that held us together.”The founders those first years did whatever was needed to keep the company afloat.“When they had to make payroll,” Bill says, “sometimes they'd pay everyone else but they didn't pay themselves. So every third pay, Dad, Chuck and Bob would get a paycheck and they wouldn't the other weeks.”At home, the Joneses sold beef cattle and German shepherds to help to make ends meet.By the end of the third year, Penn United had turned the corner. The company had survived, thanks to the perseverance and wherewithal of the founders, and the growth and success of Penn United would become more than what they could have ever imagined.
Just three years after Penn United's founding fathers started their company, they did something almost unheard of at the time — they turned the company over to the employees, so to speak.But the move fit like hand in a glove for the men who sought to share the company's wealth.The founders, Christian men, intended to run a business that would provide employees a good job, allow them to earn enough money to support a family, and afford them the opportunity to live a comfortable retirement.“Dad was all about sharing with everyone,” Bill says. “Dad was the most humble, giving person that I've ever known.”Carl also didn't want to be the kind of owner of the company where he left to start Penn United.To that end, the company of then 23 employees established a Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), which at the time was the first in Western Pennsylvania and only the second such endeavor in the entire state.The plan enables employees to own a portion of the company through a trust fund.An ESOP gives employees stock in the company that's held in trust. The potential payout is a lucrative retirement benefit.“The day they created the ESOP,” Bill says of the founders, “they started giving everybody 15 percent of their wages that went into the ESOP.”The novel employee benefit plan was not an immediate hit with the entire workforce at the still-fledgling company.“Some of the employees looked at that and went, 'Pfff, yeah, we're not worth anything anyway, so what's that?” Bill says. “But the ones that understood it back then and stayed with the company, they became millionaires.“We still have people retiring today, millionaires. If they started and stayed here long enough, because of the growth in the company.”
Being a good steward of its workforce and community is also in keeping with another of Penn United's founding principles — Christian values.The founders — all church-going, God-fearing men — established the company's vision and values based on those rooted in the Bible.“It's how all three men lived their lives,” Bill said. “They recognized without Jesus, they wouldn't have anything.A favorite saying of Carl's was: “God owns all, we're just renting.”The men believed there was a life after death, and they would be judged by their labors on Earth, including how they conducted their business and how they treated others, including their employees and customers.“At the company's inception, our founders set forth two principles as the foundation for all our actions and interactions — we exist to glorify God and we will honor His Word, the Holy Bible, in all we do,” according to the Penn United website.Among the company's core values and tenets are:- Do what is right regardless of the cost.- Have absolute integrity and honesty.- Strive for excellence.- Work hard and be dedicated.- Hold each other accountable.- Be friendly and warm.Those principles serve as a blueprint of sorts, Bill says, on how to manage workers, serve customers and handle hard times and conflicts.“It's how we all become better people,” he says.Like father, like son, Bill opens his employee meetings with prayer.“But I do it in a soft way so I don't offend anybody,” he says. “I never want to push my faith on someone. But I want our people to understand, the company was founded on Christian principles, like this nation was.”He acknowledged there are “non-believers” and even atheists among his employees, “but I still love them just as much as everybody else. They come in and do their jobs.”Some customers, too, may find it odd seeing the Christian flag when they make their way to Penn United, Bill recognizes.“But our sales guys go to them, 'You know, everyone has a set of principles and our principles just happen to be biblical ones, and we try to treat everybody right and everybody fairly.”
Penn United is poised to mark five decades in business next year. In anticipation of that historic achievement, the company released the following statement:“As we look forward to 2021, Penn United Technologies, Inc. is in the planning stages of celebrating the companies 50th Anniversary on May 4, 2021.We will be planning multiple activities to celebrate with our employee-owners, with our customers, and in our communities. We will recognize the achievement, dedication, and hard work of our employee-owners, which has allowed us to realize this major milestone of 50 years in business.”
