For those outside the heavy clay industry, J.C. Steele & Sons may not be a well-known name. Josh McClain, who joined us late in 2023 as a mining sales specialist, plans to change that.
“Mining relies on heavy-duty equipment, to minimize downtime and help guarantee the production needed for economies of scale,” he says. “Steele machines have done that for over 100 years in heavy clay. That’s why we’re gaining traction in sectors like gypsum and iron & steel.”
Josh adds that our feeders have been used in paste backfill applications for decades. However, he thinks it’s time more people in mining learn what our customers in heavy clay and elsewhere already know:
“Nobody builds machines or supports them like Steele.”
A mine engineer by education and experience
After earning undergraduate degrees in both geology and mining engineering at Virginia Tech, Josh spent 13 years working for Morton Salt. He worked in two Morton mines, in Louisiana and Ohio, in production, maintenance, engineering and project management.
Having built a solid foundation in mining, Josh joined Amcast, where he spent nearly five years, selling their premium crushers and wear part solutions.
Now he’s charged with introducing Steele to various mining companies and consultant groups across North America and around the world. He’s meeting with mining professionals at trade shows, meet and greets, and site visits to learn what we can do to help them reach their goals.
“We have a widget for that.”
Having sat on the other side of the table, Josh is not only fluent in technical specs, but also understands the need to help customers with project-specific goals and milestones.
“Mining companies may have different criteria than Steele’s other customers have had,” Josh notes. In keeping with Steele’s continuous improvement efforts, he plans to ask hard questions and find answers which may have been foreign to Steele in the past.
“Steele builds even feeders on a modular platform, so we can size to handle your application,” he says. And we build our machines like tanks, to run with minimal maintenance and fast replacement of in-stock wear parts.”
Steele never moved away from stocking
In an age of just-in-time manufacturing, Josh believes that Steele stands alone with its inventory commitment. The company maintains inventories of wear parts, shafts, gears, structural castings and sub-assemblies, with 98% OTD of parts.
As he points out, “Steele services machines we built in the 1940s — and we still have the parts in stock for them.
“Growing up, my parents and grandparents would spend extra for brands they knew would last and you could fix if they went down,” he says. “More and more, you hear people say ‘They don’t make them like they used to!’
“Steele still does, which is one of the main reasons I decided to join them.”
If you’re attending CIM, Mine Expo, or Alta this year, you may run into Josh. Drop him a line here and read more about our even feeders.