This isn’t the first time Fred Apt’s position has been eliminated.
In 1998, “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap eliminated 400 salaried Sunbeam Corp. employees in four days, including Apt as a product manager.
This time around, Apt has more time to adjust to losing his job when Haldex Brake Corp. closes its doors next month. But it doesn’t make it any easier.
For some time morale at Haldex has been down in the dumps, Apt said. Long-term employees who want to jump ship now, don’t for fear of losing severance pay.
Apt and his wife, Janet, moved to Iola in April of 2008 specifically for his position as an engineer at Haldex. With that short time under his belt, his severance package will be “three to five” weeks of salary.
Not enough, in other words, to turn down a job if one should come his way in the meantime.
AND HE’S looking.
“At 57, I’m too young to retire,” he said, but also realizes he’s on the old side of the competition.
Seems all his life Apt has been trying to stay ahead of the whims of industry. A good education and the willingness to retrain have helped him stay successful.
Apt is a 1971 graduate of Iola High School. From there he attended the University of Kansas, where he received a degree in biological sciences.
His first stint was as a petroleum engineer, including two years with Carmel Energy of Iola. He worked for various oil companies around the southeast portion of the state until “the bottom dropped out,” in 1985. Oil exploration hit a brick wall, he said.
By then he and Janet, daughter of Jerry and Betty Skidmore, who had married in 1977, had three children.
He enrolled at Pittsburg State University and in two years had earned a degree in plastics engineering.
The family of five moved to Wooster, Ohio in 1987 where he took on with Rubbermaid in its patio furniture division.
“Turning four pounds of plastic into a chair that can hold a 300-pound person was fun,” he said of one of his projects as an analyst.
In 1995, the company sold off its patio furniture division to Sunbeam, prompting the family’s move to Neosho, Mo., where Apt was hired as a product manager of its outdoor products division. Three years into the job, “Chainsaw Al,” had led the company into financial ruin.
After the layoff from Sunbeam, Apt hired on in nearby Rogers, Ark., with Preformed Line Products, where he helped design black plastic boxes that sit high up on utility poles.
That position lasted five years, until that company downsized.
Then Apt went out on his own as a consultant. The work was good, but far off. Most weeks he’d be away five days. That wasn’t the kind of life he and Janet had envisioned.
On a visit from Janet’s parents, Fred learned of a vacant position at Haldex. After four years of self-employment, the chance at a company job sounded good again. Plus it meant after 23 years away, a return home.
Really home.
Fred pulls out a drawer from a built-in cabinet off the kitchen. In the side of the wood is stamped, “Made for Fred Apt.”
That’s his great-grandfather.
The Apts aren’t superstitious, but they couldn’t help but take it as a sign when they came shopping for a home that the move was meant to be.
“We were looking for a single-level home on a big lot and in town,” he said. The home at 601 E. Broadway fit the bill, and more.
Fred is a fourth-generation Iolan. His great-grandfather is Frederick G. Apt. His great-great-grandfather, Charles Apt, built the house for his son and his wife, Ada. The senior Apt lived across the street in a much grander home, which Frederick and Ada eventually occupied.
APT CONTENDS closing the Iola plant didn’t have to happen if Haldex executives had been willing to invest in the facility’s machinery all along.
“Employees had seen the writing on the wall for the last four to five years,” Apt said as decisions to replace aging equipment were repeatedly deferred in favor of cutting costs. “We could have been competitive with any facility in the world if our equipment would have been kept current.”
Instead, aged machines slowed turnout and required a higher number of employees needed for manufacture compared to newer equipment.
“Companies need to invest for the longterm,” he said. “That means waiting three to five years, maybe 10, for a payback for updated technology.
“Unfortunately, company officials didn’t want to make that investment either in our product, or us as a company. Ten-to-one company officials have never even been to Iola,” Apt said of the Sweden-based management.
“Anything owned by a foreign entity will do what’s best for the bottom line.”
Monterrey, Mexico workers will “have their hands full,” when production is moved their later this fall, Apt said.
“I feel sorry for them. Just one product line may have 26 versions,” he said, explaining that different companies request different specifications for valves and control systems.
Part of the reason the closing of the Iola plant has been extended beyond the original September deadline is that orders have increased by dealers who are confident of the Iola product, Apt said.
“They’re stocking up on parts,” he said of the various entities, including the U.S. Government, that operate large vehicles such as dump trucks, school buses, tractor trailers and other vehicles that use an air braking system.
Apt lauded Iola employees for their work ethic.
“They’ll be good employees wherever they go from here,” he said, noting many are cross-trained on several lines and are capable of adapting quickly to new products.
The plant’s machinists, he said, should have no trouble finding work elsewhere.
“There’s a nationwide shortage of skilled machinists,” he said.
FOR HIM, however, it’s a different story.
“I don’t know of any jobs locally that can use my level of expertise,” he said.
Accepting the job at Haldex was quite a learning curve. “I went from working in design to manufacturing,” he said. “The challenge was fun.”
But it’s been “a long time” since he’s felt that. Work slowdowns earlier in the year followed by the news of the plant’s closing have cast a pall of gloom over the plant.
The Apts hope to remain in Iola.
“I figure I’ll go back on the road and do contract work,” he said.
Janet works part time as a dental hygienist with the dental clinic operated by the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas. The job is a nice switch from always working for private dentists who tended toward upscale clients, she said. Her duties now include attending WIC — Women, Infants and Children — patients who are typically low-income or at-risk. She also works at school screenings and in the clinics at Fredonia and Garnett.
After being away from their home for 23 years, the Apts viewed their return as a win-win situation not only for themselves, but for Iola.
“Towns like Iola can learn a lot from people who have lived elsewhere and bring back their experiences with them,” Janet Apt, 56, said. “Nothing would make us happier than to be able to stay.”
The couple have been quick to immerse themselves in the community.
They attend Wesley United Methodist Church where Janet plays in the handbell choir.
Fred also serves on the Iola Public Library board of directors, Iola Planning Commission and is getting his feet wet with Iola Industries.
Since her return to Iola, Janet has hooked up with a dental hygiene study club between dental hygienists of Chanute, Humboldt and Iola.
THE APTS have three grown children, Aleaka, 30, Derick, 27, and Jeremy, 25, and are grandparents to Aleaka and her husband’s son, Bennett, 2.
