Todd Herzog, Founder and former president of Accu-Router, Board member of of the Business Roundtable Action Committee.
By Brad Durham
I interviewed Todd Herzog last fall, and sadly, Todd passed away before his complete interview was published. Todd Herzog was a valuable and irreplaceable member of the McMinnville business community. Todd and his widow, Kathy changed McMinnville for the good when they moved here many decades ago. I remembered Todd briefly after he passed in an article. You can read it by clicking here, Todd Herzog.
Why are you in McMinnville?
I have a very simple answer for that: I came here to work at Powermatic. I came here for a job. I was in Buffalo, New York and Powermatic was looking for someone to head up their sales and marketing department and I applied for the job. I came and spent 16 years in that role.
What year did you come here?
1976, in June. A very interesting thing about that…we were part of Houdaille Industries, a very prominent Fortune 500 company, and twice a year they had presentations on a business plan. And literally my first day there was one of their semi-annual meetings. I attended a meeting and Jerry Saltarelli, CEO of the corporation said, “Well, Mr. Herzog, are we going to hear from you?” George said that this was my first day on the job, and that he had invited me to join the meeting to see the discipline, and to see what this was all about. But he said that I was not ready for that presentation yet, but that I would be in six months.
When I came here, Powermatic was the third biggest employer. Number one was Carrier. Number two was A. O. Smith. Ironically, all three of them are gone. Powermatic had the main plant, the foundry, and they also owned a machine factory up in Cincinnati.
What do you think when you reflect on McMinnville’s future? Positively, negatively. What do you see in the future?
Our background historically was agriculture. I don’t see that changing. Although the population north of us is huge in Nashville and Murfreesboro. No reason to think we can’t prosper.
We are going to go through a groundswell of success with new recruiting. There is a major success that is going to be announced imminently. With 200-300 jobs. I still think we are in a prime spot to get a major win. We have that 223-acre tract on the west side of the county.
We could do so much better, and I think we will because we’ve gone to training levels that most people would love to have, and it’s here. Our CT program at the high school is phenomenal. I think it is the best in the state. Obviously, the robotics center is a major win. Megatronics is a big win. There’s a lot going on here.
Here is the exciting part. When I first came here, if you wanted a good job, you had to do what everybody did up north, you had to leave town. You don’t have to do that anymore. If you are willing to drive forty miles, from here to Decherd, forty miles or less, you’ve got all kinds of opportunities in careers. Obviously, Bridgestone…they are going to hire a lot more people. If you breathe on a mirror, right now, if they like you, they will hire you right now. They added 28 people a couple of months ago, for their monthly add. And they aren’t slowing down, they are going to keep moving forward. So, to make a long story short, if you have a need, and you have a good story to tell, you can find people.
Do you think there is a difference between McMinnville and Warren County?
I guess it is in the eye of the beholder. Warren County is much bigger than McMinnville in every possible regard. Obviously in industrial recruiting. Our industrial parks are in the county, not the city. So, if you are going to talk about our county, you can talk about our localized success, but it has to be the county. You could find a plant in the city, but it would have to be an existing one and probably an older one. So, you are talking about 27,000 people versus 14,000. Big difference.
You have a lot more people in the county. Head count drives a lot of funding, so that’s where it’s at.
If you were mayor of McMinnville and you had a magic wand, what three things would you change?
Well, first of all, I think they have done a pretty good job in the last five years. Redoing the Civic Center was a huge project, and probably very much needed to support longer term growth.
I continue to believe that the city ought to have an industrial recruiting program. There is nothing to stop them. For example, the city of Sparta leased all kinds of land on 111 for industrial recruiting. There is nothing to stop them from doing that. Just because IDB (Industrial Development Board) reports to the county doesn’t mean they wouldn’t work with the city. So, I think they are missing an opportunity there — almost to the point of being short-sighted. The original industrial park of Warren County was Depot Bottom. I’m talking about a hundred years ago, but that is absolutely where it was.
IDB, by definition, has five people from the city and five people from the county. There is no bias that keeps the city from being involved in industrial recruiting, if they wanted to be. It is more a case of the board of alderman deciding if they want to make that a priority, and then do something about it. Nothing like that gets done overnight. You would have to develop a game plan and start to put the pieces together. I don’t see why they couldn’t or shouldn’t.
So you would change the industrial recruiting if you were mayor?
I would add it as a priority and see what you could do to develop sites for it.
Is there another thing you would do as mayor if you had a magic wand?
Well, the general population wants more in terms of consumer options like more shopping, stores, restaurants. That is population driven. I don’t know how we can affect that unless we have a corresponding growth in population. Nothing strikes me at the moment but industrial recruiting.
What do you think unites us in McMinnville?
Success is one (thing). If you have success, people rally behind that. I you have a cause that you are trying to get, like the Civic Center. If you have something that people can see and get behind, that helps. Again, I’ll go back. You’ve got the Civic Center project…you’ve got the Armory being built right now. Motlow is going to put a big building right behind the Robotics Center. You have the Bridgestone project going on, and you’ve got another one pending. That’s a lot of activity for a relatively small area. That will get people feeling good about Warren County.
What do you think divides us in McMinnville?
That’s a tough one. When I first came here, I didn’t understand the way this works. We’ve historically been hard-core Bible Belt. We are about as traditional Bible Belt as you can get, and I think that is a divisive issue.
That’s a little ironic, isn’t it? It should unite us.
Not all religions get together. I guess that’s safe to say. Religion here is a borderline full-time project. It’s not that you go to Mass once a week and do your duty. We have something going on tonight and tomorrow night. Most churches meet Sunday and Wednesday night, and more often as needed.
I think some of the historic attitudes behind religion are problematic in terms of people getting along. It doesn’t bother me any.
Do you agree with the direction and quality of education in Warren County that the public school system offers for our children?
I’m biased because I am heavily involved in one aspect of that. The growth of the CTE program at the high school is phenomenal, particularly if you go back 20 years. It used to be a shop program, and it is totally different from that today. We have $5-$8 million in equipment in the CTE wing. We have a huge megatronics program there, and a huge robotics program there. We have one million dollars’ worth of equipment — all new in the machine shop technology program.
I was always impressed with the culinary arts program they have. They’ve got everything there that running a restaurant could possibly want or need. That’s an impressive program. Bottom line, going back to getting a good job, if the truth be known, there are more job openings now than there are people to fill them. These are career jobs, they aren’t just week-end openings. If we have the training available to train kids to get jobs like that, that’s a huge part of being successful going forward.
Another thing I do is interview kids, who we give scholarship aid to. One of the hot topics on my question board is “where do you want to settle down once you get your education?” And I can tell you unequivocally that well over 50% is right here. That’s encouraging because that means that your leaders of the future are being developed internally. That’s all to the good.
Is everything you need in McMinnville exist in terms of groceries, retail stores, churches, restaurants?
No, we travel outside the area to augment that topic. Example, we go to Publix at least every six weeks over in Tullahoma. Publix is an expensive store, but it’s got great stuff. Even something as simple as their carts. They run so much smoother than the ones at Walmart. That alone encourages me to want to go there.
We do a lot of shopping in Murfreesboro. If it’s important, like once a year, we’ll do Christmas shopping in Chattanooga. Count me among those who buy a lot of stuff from Amazon. It is so easy to do. You hit a button, and you have it the next day. They have everything. You are knocking yourself out, and you can’t find something and why don’t you check with Amazon. They’ve got it.
I think there is no men’s store; there are limitations on women’s stores. I think there have been more eateries, if you will. There’s still a big void in terms of what most people want, or at least what we want.
Do you think McMinnville is doing enough for people who are economically disadvantaged?
I don’t know if I am the right guy to answer that, but we have that HOME with a pretty sizable committee behind it…with funding from both the city and the county. There is an effort being made for the 30 to 40 homeless people, to help them. That seems to be an effort that has been pretty well done, and pretty well received.
What’s interesting is that both Kathy and I have gotten to know virtually all the charities in Warren County. I’ve gotten to know them because of applying for help for two of the organizations I represent, our scholarship fund and Habitat for Humanity. I go once a year in front of the city and county and I get to hear everybody else that is active in that regard. Kathy is in the Power of 100 and she hears three presentations every quarter from local charities. Over a period of time, she has gotten to know what these charities are all involved from a female perspective, and that Power of 100 is a great organization. If you benefit from it now, you get $15,000-16,000. And for a local charity, that is a huge benefit.
But if you were to ask the non-profits how are they doing, it really depends on the leadership of the non-profit in terms of how successful they are. Some do better than others. There is a difference in talent.
Another aspect is we have the best higher education support structure of any other state in the country. We have free tuition for community college and tech school for two years. That also means you can get a four-year degree, if the first two years you go to Motlow, then transfer all those credits to a state school to get four-year degree…instead of having $200,000 in college debt it takes you the rest of your life to pay off, you’ve got a much smaller number and it becomes much more doable. Another thing we have done is that we’ve moved a lot of college classes down to the high school, and there you can get scholarship aid to cover the cost of tuition while you are in high school.
Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you would like to comment on?
I don’t live in the city, and I never have. I think what the city has done in terms of redeveloping downtown has been positive. They continue to urge that along. That’s been positive. Turn the clock back 100 years, Saturdays was the key day on the calendar to go downtown and spend all day. Shopping, socializing, eating. We keep adding more to the downtown scene, and that makes it more desirable to go there more often.
That Blue Building may create some economic things that will push some of these things into being if there is economic support downtown that we’ll get new restaurants. I don’t think we are going to get a Target or anything like that but you might see some more diversified shops.
I think we are going to continue to see growth because of where we are located. We have to be…Tennessee has got the least amount of debt of the 50 states. Our state government has a requirement of a balanced budget. That is in the Constitution, and so our state is absolutely in a prime position. If you look at sales tax, growth is substantial because the population keeps going up. You look at the people coming in. Californians go to Texas first, but Tennessee is number two. A lot of people from Florida are coming here because they are tired of being chased around during hurricane season. Tennessee is a good place to live.
The next complete interview will be featuring Tony Lawrence.
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