Posted July 2, 2007, at 12:03 p.m. CDT

On June 28 a single-engine airplane carrying three ethanol industry executives crashed 80 miles from its point of departure at Spirit of St. Louis Airport following the 2007 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop in St. Louis, Mo. The three men, McC Inc. President David McCormick, 44, McC Project Manager Michael Kammerer, 41, and Environmental Control Systems co-owner Waylon Karsten, 36, were killed in the crash.

According to Minneapolis television station WCCO, the Piper 46 was flown by McCormick and had taken off at approximately 8 a.m. from Spirit of St. Louis Airport in suburban St. Louis. The plane, en route to Buffalo, Minn., crashed in a farm field in the northwestern corner of Montgomery County in Missouri. The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an ongoing investigation of the incident.

In September 2004, Ethanol Producer Magazine Editorial Director Tom Bryan profiled McCormick and his fast growing company, McC Inc. The story explains how a young McCormick wanted to build an ethanol still on his family farm and years later ended up running a successful construction firm that works with leading ethanol plant builders such as Fagen Inc. and others.

A memorial service for McCormick was scheduled for July 2 at 7 p.m. at the McCormick residence near Buffalo.

From the September 2004 issue of Ethanol Producer Magazine.

McCormick Construction: Form and Function

By Tom Bryan

In 1979, Dave McCormick dished out $75 to attend an ethanol production seminar at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minn. Despite the fact that his father thought he was nuts, the teenager was intent on building himself an on-farm ethanol plant—a backyard still. As history would have it, McCormick never did get that ethanol plant assembled, but that day he met someone who, years later, would have a profound effect on his career.

Ron Fagen, president and CEO of Granite Falls, Minn.-based Fagen Inc., was one of the main speakers at the seminar. McCormick recalls a young Fagen telling seminar attendees he believed ethanol was the "wave of the future."

"I never really thought about that day again until I heard a Fagen employee talking about how Ron had told him once about a time when things weren't going so well … and he just kept believing that someday ethanol's time would come," McCormick said. "Ron never gave up that belief."

As fate would have it, McCormick, who is now the 41-year-old owner and president of Rockford, Minn.-based McCormick Construction (McC), would get another opportunity to join the ethanol industry 22 years later. And he'd end up working with the same man he met at Southwest State University two decades earlier.

Today, McC is one of Fagen Inc.'s preferred contractors. The company designs and builds grain handling and grain processing systems for ethanol plants, from concrete slip-form silos, to scalping, grinding and conveying equipment, and everything in between. McCormick also designs and builds DDGS storage and load-out systems. To date, McC has completed work on six dry mill ethanol plants—a subcontractor to Fagen Inc. on each—and the company is currently working on three more ethanol plants under construction. The company has taken on an array of bulk material handling construction projects in several industries and has had as many as 200 employees on the payroll at a given time. However, as McCormick is quick to point out, the company's success didn't come overnight.

From farm kid to business owner
McCormick grew up on a farm near Iona, Minn. He established his character, and his work ethic, early on in life.

"My dad was a farmer and I watched him make due with what he had," McCormick said. "I always wondered if things might have been easier for him if he'd just spent the money on the stuff he really needed. I guess that's part of why I became the person I am."

Not just spending, but spending on the right things was a lesson he learned early. As a young man, McCormick went to work for a business owner who constructed water towers. To this day, he credits that individual with showing him the value of a job done right. However, he also learned from that individual's mistakes. "He spent money he didn't have, and he eventually lost the business," McCormick said.

After his stint in water tower building, McCormick decided to take a stab at running his own company. The entrepreneurial bug had bit him. He launched a steel painting and sandblasting operation in the mid-1980s, but found out the hard way that running a business isn't always what it's cracked up to be. "It took me six years to get things paid off after that endeavor," he said.

So McCormick's entrepreneurial career went on hold. He eventually went to work for T.E. Ibberson, a builder of grain elevators and grain handling systems. He did well and became a project manager. The job took him overseas and provided him with a solid background in the grain handling and bulk material handling construction business. He left T.E. Ibberson for a brief period in the late 1980s, taking a position with Hubbard Milling, only to return to the former company to fill another management position. Eventually, McCormick grew tired of working on the road and once again started thinking about running his own company. "I thought to myself, 'If I could get just one of these projects a year on my own, I could make it,'" he recalled.

Starting a company is easier said than done. McCormick went to three different banks looking for start-up capital, only to be turned down by each. "They thought my idea was crazy," he said.

Finally, his hometown bank offered him a small loan against the equity he had built up on a house—but it wasn't enough. Eventually, the man who McCormick said had always worked with too little was the man who made sure his son had what it took to get his company started right. McCormick's father offered up one of his tractors as collateral and the bank extended the young entrepreneur a $25,000 line of credit. McCormick Construction was born.

As it turns out, McCormick didn't need the full $25,000 to get his company rolling—he used just $15,000—and the bank was able to release its hold over his dad's tractor within six months. McCormick started small, headquartering the business out of his basement and taking on repair jobs in various industries. The company quickly built a reputation for doing good work and soon bigger jobs came knocking. From the mid-1990s through 2001, the company's project portfolio, along with its capabilities and assets, grew. The company took on various bulk material handling projects—grain, flour, pet food, plastics, rendering, biosolids and other materials. McC launched a crane division in 1999 and a decade after its $15,000 start-up, the business idea that was scoffed at by three banks had become a multi-million dollar company.

Ethanol industry projects usher in new era for McC
Surprisingly, the company has only been working in the ethanol industry since 2001, when it built the grain and DDGS handling and storage systems at Glacial Lakes Energy LLC in Watertown, S.D. The project marked the beginning of what would become a solid working relationship with Fagen Inc., one of the nation's top builders of dry mill ethanol plants.

Now, about 60 percent of the McC's new business is in the ethanol industry, McCormick said. "Getting into the industry through Fagen and their excellent reputation within the industry has given us an opportunity that may not have been available otherwise," he said.

Every project is important, but a few have been especially meaningful to McC. The Glacial Lakes Energy project, for example, proved to the industry that the company was a reputable contractor that produces quality workmanship, McCormick said. The job in Watertown also marked the first time McC had to compete in the ethanol industry against companies that offered "jump-form" concrete silos, as opposed to the "slip-form" silos McC has been making since 1997. The term slip-form means the continuous pouring of concrete; it eliminates cold joints in concrete structures. Jump forming is, as it sounds, jumping the form up every day—or in some cases twice a day—usually pouring five feet of wall each time you jump the form.

McC's slip-form grain and DDGS silos have been highly incorporated into the Fagen Inc./ICM Inc. dry mill ethanol plant package. Perhaps there is no better showcase for these forms than the giant concrete towers of VeraSun Energy LLC in Aurora, S.D. The 100-mmgy facility includes conjoined 500,000-bushel corn silos, each feeding four hammermills with a combined grind capacity of 6,000 bushels per hour, and oversize twin DDGS silos. Each corn silo is 150 feet tall and 74 feet in diameter.

The VeraSun project was not only larger than anything McC had done in the ethanol industry, but it also allowed the company to bid on a design/build project and come up with an innovative new design.

"The only information that was given to the bidders was performance specifcations," McCormick said. "We spent a lot of time looking at how to keep it simple but efficient. The result is what everyone has seen at VeraSun."

In fact, the design was so successful that McC has since used it as the basis for its designs on all of its other Fagen Inc. projects. "The design works and it's efficient to build," McCormick said. "Basically, we have taken the design and shrunk it down in size for the 40 million gallon projects we've done since [VeraSun]."

That said, every ethanol project is unique, and McC doesn't take a cookie-cutter approach to designing and building grain and DDGS systems. "Some plants don't have DDGS—they sell everything as wet cake," McCormick said. "Some have two truck-receiving bays and one rail bay, others have only one truck bay and one rail bay. On one hand, not all projects are the same, but on the other hand, there really aren't that many changes anymore."

Strong partnerships, lasting loyalty
While nothing has been handed to McC, the company has benefited from being in the right place at the right time and developing a good working relationship with Fagen Inc.

McCormick credits Fagen Inc. with providing McC with growth opportunities and supporting the company in many ways, both in the office and in the field. The owners of both companies are straight talkers—no-nonsense guys who expect the best from their people and believe there is only one way to do things right. "I've had that philosophy almost all my life," McCormick said.

Fagen and McCormick also share similar philosophies about taking care of their employees and providing real career opportunities. "I admire Ron and the entire team at Fagen Inc.," McCormick said. "We are proud to be a part of this team as a subcontractor. Fagen Inc. has allowed us an opportunity for growth and we believe we have stepped up to the challenges."

McCormick and Fagen also have a coincidental connection as pilots. McCormick, who now pilots a single prop Mooney Eagle, started flying out of the need to be in several different places over a short period of time. For example, flying helps McCormick visit multiple ethanol plant construction sites before and after slip-forms are put in. Understandably, he flies out of necessity—not necessarily passion.

"Flying is not a love of mine," he admitted. "I enjoy it, but there is a lot of stress that goes along with flying. Flying has helped McC grow, and I think it shows a commitment to being in contact with your clients and the people that work with you. To be honest, I think it has a lot to do with the recent success of my company."

An owner's changing role
As McCormick's company has grown and changed, so has his own role as president.

"I have gone from being the salesman, estimator, project manager, crane operator and whatever else may have needed to be done, to managing a good construction company," he said. "I still put on all of these hats at one time or another, but my key people have stepped up to these roles and challenges. That has allowed me to concentrate on growing the company."

While every employee at McC plays an important role, McCormick relies heavily on three key managers: Dan Shefland, David Kammerer and Jon Walters.
Shefland runs the company's engineering department, working with three draftsmen and a structural engineer. Walters handles construction services, managing staffing, transfers, new hires and other personnel matters. Kammerer manages projects, timelines and costs.

With good managers at his side, McCormick has been able to shift his focus on what he calls the "bigger picture." He's personally invested in the long-term success of the ethanol industry, and he now sits on the board of directors of one of the Minnesota ethanol facilities McC is helping to build. He said he still enjoys running McC, but he's looking forward to the day when he can see someone else take over the business. "What I really enjoy is watching people become successful at doing things—whether it's running a company, managing people or being a good crane operator," he said.

McCormick's lifelong obsession with seeing things done right has transferred over into his community involvement. In Rockford, he has helped at least two local businesses start up. "That's been very rewarding to be able to do," he said. "I guess it's just my way of giving back."

Giving back is important to McCormick. He believes it is important to invest time, energy and money into the things that have been good to a person in life. "I have a philosophy of always giving more then I take," he said.

For McCormick, giving back has also meant funding local school programs and community activities, getting involved in local politics and sponsoring ethanol industry events. He is also helping a couple of his former employees pay for college. "They're going to come back and help me," he said.

Providing opportunities, never looking back
Allowing every employee an opportunity for career advancement is important to McCormick. Sometimes that means accepting the fact that they'll have to move on. "We've had our share of people leave. I actually welcome that sort of thing if someone is leaving for a bigger and better opportunity," he said. "You have to allow people to advance in their career and really do what they should be doing."

McCormick believes that providing opportunities of this sort has given him a workforce of extremely loyal employees. "We tend to hire a lot of younger, up-and-coming people—some of them haven't had the easiest of lives but they turn out to be some of my best workers."

He continued, "I have a lot of faith in the people we've hired. In turn, they take a lot of pride in what they do. We consider these slip-forms landmarks—that's how the guys see them. These guys are out there making landmarks that will be around for years. It's something they can look back on and be very proud of."

And for McCormick?

"I don't look back," he said. "I guess that's another thing with me."

Tom Bryan is the editorial director of Ethanol Producer Magazine. Reach him at tbryan@bbibiofuels.com.