Industry History | Nucor — Six Million Dollars for an Arc Furnace at Darlington
· 1969-6
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · Report an issue
Find memories left by people near you.
Distribute Bounty
This will distribute the bounty equally among all qualifying memories. This action cannot be undone.
Cancel Bounty
Are you sure you want to cancel this bounty? The remaining amount will be refunded to your account.
Success!
Operation completed successfully.
Error
Something went wrong.
Industry History | Nucor — Six Million Dollars for an Arc Furnace at Darlington
kevin
People treat Nucor as a Charlotte steel house that always melted scrap in an electric furnace and paid teammates a production bonus.
The first mill was a rescue of a joist shop.
Nuclear Corporation of America had come out of the wreck of REO Motor and a failed nuclear-services pivot.
In 1962 it bought Vulcraft, a Florence, South Carolina joist maker founded in 1946, and hired F. Kenneth Iverson to run the plant.
By 1965 Iverson was running the parent because Vulcraft was the only division that made money.
Headquarters moved to Charlotte in 1966 to sit nearer the Carolina plants.
Imported bar then supplied most of Vulcraft's steel, and the price kept moving against the joist book.
Iverson, a metallurgist, mortgaged the company for a $6 million loan in late-1960s dollars and built an electric-arc mini-mill at 300 Steel Mill Road in Darlington, South Carolina.
The furnace, caster, and rolling mill were meant to feed Vulcraft first.
Production began in June 1969.
Hot steel broke out of the caster through late 1970.
Earnings recovered in 1971, the year the board dropped the Nuclear name and became Nucor.
The ticker NUE listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1972.
The mechanism was simple and then rare in American steel: melt local scrap with electricity instead of feeding a blast furnace, sit the mill next to the customer, and keep the payroll non-union with a bonus tied to tons.
Integrated mills called the product cheap bar.
Darlington made enough of it to fund the next mill, and the next.
The plant is still on Steel Mill Road.
A visitor sees an active melt shop from the public road, not a vanished 1969 shed.
Photo: public-domain South Carolina landscape via Wikimedia Commons.
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
changes?
delete this memory?
We detected that you have a Blox in your crypto wallet! We will import the Blox into your account.
Click on done below to complete the import.
Welcome Back!
Sign in to preserve cherished moments
Don't have an account?
Welcome!!
Sign up and start preserving cherished moments
?
?
Choose your payment method
Buy with Metablox Credit
Do you want to mint Blox with Metablox Credit?
Which Crypto would you like to use?
Purchase Confirmed!
Your Blox is being minted on-chain and will appear in your profile shortly.
Log in or sign up to claim your Blox.
How many credits do you want to buy?
$100 USD = 1 Metablox Credit = 1 Blox.
Use Metablox Credit to mint any Blox you want on the map.
expand_more