Once the business was established, Hyman’s wife Molly joined him in Northfield. “She worked right alongside my father. My dad would take the horse and wagon and go out peddling. My mother would stay in the house, and our backyard was full of the things we collected that she bought and sold. She really was equal to my father in the business and was a key to its early success.”
In 1929, the Kaplans returned to St. Paul with their business and Hyman bought out another dealer in town and operated under the name H.S. Kaplan Scrap Iron & Metal Company, Inc. for many years. “He became the big yard buying from all the little yards and he grew and grew,” said Reuben. “When we moved to a site on Shepherd Road in 1965, we were the largest scrap yard west of Chicago. We worked long, hard hours and stuck with it through thick and thin and made it.” In 1990 the company moved from its recycling facility along the banks of the Mississippi River to its present location.
Reuben Kaplan, who today serves as the company’s “consultant and official historian,” became involved in the business before he started school. “Remember the zinc jar covers that we used to have on bottles, with a glass and a rubber ring?” he recalled. “When I was four years old, I had a little hatchet, and my job was to put a hole in it, knock the glass out, then pull the rubber ring and put those in a gunnysack.”
Reuben’s son Harold also got involved at a young age, joining the firm full-time in 1967 after graduating from the University of Minnesota. Harold’s son, Bob, worked part-time at the company during his school years. He joined the firm full-time after earning a degree from the University of Minnesota in 1993. Both Harold and Bob credit Reuben with teaching them the all-important people skills that have made the business successful over the years.
“This is very much a relationship business and you have to be able to deal with people,” said Harold. “We have people come in today, believe it or not, who are grandchildren of customers who knew my dad. I credit the building of these long-term relationships with the customer-oriented philosophy we have had in place from the beginning. It’s a real credit to my dad and grandfather. We believe that our dedication to high-quality customer service and competitive pricing for recyclable materials has been the key to our success. And we conduct all of our business in a very friendly atmosphere that I think our customers enjoy. For example,
An operator for Kaplan’s Metal Reduction uses a Komatsu PC300 equipped with a
LaBounty MSD50 shear to cut a tank in the scrap yard.
Kaplan’s uses three
customized Komatsu
scrap handlers in its
St. Paul operation. Here,
an operator moves
ferrous scrap with a
PC300 equipped with a
magnet.
my dad has always been known to pass out candy and cookies to kids who come through here. He even has treats for the customers’ dogs. So it’s a really fun atmosphere around here.”
For Bob, being the fourth generation in the family business means a great deal. “I take a lot of pride being part of a business that was started by my great-grandfather and operated by my grandfather and father,” he said. “My father and grandfather have taught me a lot about the business and I have learned as much from them as I did in college. I really enjoy this industry and the people involved in it. It’s really a small fraternity where everyone knows each other.