American Structures Discusses The Value Of Stainless Steel Tanks

Rosemarie Bristol of American Structures, Inc. counts the many reasons to consider bolted stainless steel tanks — sustainability, residual value, and expandability among them — and how to choose the right one.

Todd Schnick: We’re coming to you live from Dallas, Texas. This is day four of AWWA ACE 2012 and Water Online radio. I’m your host Todd Schnick, joined by my colleague, Todd Youngblood. Todd, this next lady is going to be a handful.

Todd Youngblood: You know, I was worried we were going to get one of these.

Todd Schnick: Let’s bring our guest on. I want to welcome Rosemarie Bristol, who’s a marketing and sales manager with American Structures. Welcome to the show, Rosemarie.

Rosemarie: Well, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

Todd Schnick: Well, it is our pleasure. Rose, before we get into it, do take a second and tell us a little bit about you and your background.

Rosemarie: I’m a native of Menominee, Wisconsin. I was born and raised there. I did serve in the military. I was a United States Marine.

Todd Schnick: Oh. Well, thank you for your service.

Todd Youngblood: Thank you.

Rosemarie: Thank you. For eight years. And then I eventually ended up, through a series of jobs, at American Structures.

Todd Schnick: Well, tell us all about American Structures. What are you doing for your marketplace?

Rosemarie: Well, American Structures is a manufacturer of bolted stainless steel tanks. And our tanks are applicable for the commercial, industrial, agricultural, and municipal fields. We do wastewater tanks, freshwater drinking tanks, process tanks, and dry storage tanks of all types.

Todd Schnick: Rosemarie, you just mentioned stainless steel very specifically. Is that a big deal? And if so, why?

Rosemarie: Well, for us it’s been a big deal. For many people these days, “green” or “sustainable” is a buzzword. We’ve been constantly doing that since our 37 years in the history of our business. We were all about reuse, repurpose, reuse. And stainless steel for us is the ultimate in sustainability.

We make our tanks applicable for different types of fields. If they no longer are usable or decommissioned for one reason or another, they can be torn down cleaned up, reutilized in another field. They can be relocated.

Stainless steel has a residual value that never goes away. And so we were kind of green before green was cool. And it’s just been our mentality the entire time we’ve been in business.

Todd Schnick: Plus, stainless steel just looks good.

Todd Youngblood: Yeah.

Todd Schnick: Looks solid, looks reliable.

Rosemarie: It’s a very nice aesthetic.

Todd Schnick: Sure.

Rosemarie: It can blend into almost any environment, whether it’s agricultural, or urban, or rural. And it doesn’t have the maintenance issues that some other tanks do. Not to denigrate their tanks, it’s just, it has a nice quality. Our 300 series or our 3 or 4 stainless steel tanks aren’t terribly over-shiny. And then over time, they passivate.

And then they become very anomalous with their environment, and they don’t stick out like a sore thumb. And they look very nice. It’s an attractive tank. And then with the residual value and all the other good things, we think we sort of have a winner all the way across the board.

Todd Schnick: Well, you mentioned competition. Why should people look strongly at American Structures?

Rosemarie: For us specifically, we think it’s the residual value. The fact that it’s a sustainable product, it is very comparable. And it’s competitive for some of our other tank businesses that are out there.

It can continue to be used for… Well, we’ve been in business 37 years, and we’ve never replaced one of our tanks.

Todd Schnick: Wow.

Rosemarie: And we provide a variety of different warranties, depending on the application. Obviously, the causticity of the contents of the tank would be a huge issue for some of those longer-terms, but that, and the fact that it’s applicable to pretty much any industry or commercial endeavor that you have out there.

It’s just kind of like a one size fits all for all your different needs, and we can provide that for you.

Todd Schnick: Rosemarie, I’m curious about the buying process of a tank. I mean, I don’t think I go to TanksRUs.com and order the thing. I know it’s a lot more complex than that.

Can you just walk us through, from the perspective of a utility manager, how to decide what kind of tank I want, and how to design and install it, et cetera? Just that whole process.

Rosemarie: Well, some of the important things you’d want to consider when thinking about the type of tank you’d want would be the contents that are going to be stored in it; the length of time that the tank is going to be needed; the type of product that it’s going to be — whether it’s a liquid or a dry product, or whether it’s a mineral or some other sludge or drinking water.

Whether it needs to be freshwater, whether it can be dirty or black water, your proportions of your tank, whether you need a larger diameter tank or a smaller, stand-type.

Not necessarily a smaller tank, but a smaller diameter tank with a higher height. And that would provide some additional water pressure, depending if it was going to be serving a municipal need. And then of course your budget.

Todd Schnick: Sure. Are you one size fits all, or can you design, supply, and build to a customer’s specifications?

Rosemarie: Absolutely!

Todd Schnick: That’s what I thought.

Rosemarie: That’s like, a male question. You ask me a few things, and I answer with one word. Sorry. Sorry guys, I’m going to get shot for that one.

Todd Youngblood: And we knew she was going to be trouble from the start.

Rosemarie: You know, you need that kind of “ba-doomp!” [comedian’s rim shot sound] now. But, no… I like to think we are one size fits all, because we do standard tanks. We have some standardized tanks, but we are a custom tank.

We have standard sizes. When someone comes up and says, “We need a 250,000 gallon tank,” we would look at the needs of what they need to do with it. If they need pressurized volume, and where it needs to go, if it’s going to be an easy maintenance situation, or an easy erection process.

If it’s inside a building, or if it’s outside a building, or if there aren’t any continuous buildings, that’s going to be a problem erection for it. And what we do really try hard — and I know everybody’s going to tell you this — is we try to look at the needs of our customer, and then recommend what the best product and the most economical product for them is going to be.

That’s not always going to be the least expensive. If they have needs that are continued down the road a number of years, we’re going to try to give them a picture of what they need to do with that tank in the future.

And if we can provide them something now that will fit their needs in an expandability, and so they won’t have to buy a completely new tank later on down the road, we might offer them and then provide a price range for them, for that.

Something also to consider with our bolted design is, say you're adamant that you only want an X amount of tank. You want a 75,000-gallon tank, but you know in 15 years, you're going to be growing. Those tanks can be expandable. We can take off the top.

Whether it’s an open tank or a covered tank, we can make sure that top ring is cleaned up. Then we can start stacking on additional rings on those tanks, and expand them up. Which is another factor for stainless steel, is we can take, say, the glass-lined fused steel tank and take our stainless steel rings and expand it up.

We have a lot of — not necessarily composite tanks, like you would say “a composite tank for an elevated water tank” — but we have a lot of projects where we have maybe the first X amount of rings are stainless steel, and then they want a glass-lined on top of that for some reason. So it’s a very malleable product. It can be situated to fit all different type of situations.

Todd Schnick: Rosemarie, I hate to say it, but we’re out of time. Before we let you go, how could people get in touch with you? And where can they learn more information about American Structures?

Rosemarie: It’s kind of nice. We are revamping our website right now. Our website is. I know that’s a mouthful. But if you also forget all that, and you just remember American Structures, do a browser. We’ll come up on that.

And also “bolted stainless steel tanks” is a good…

Todd Schnick: Google search term?

Rosemarie: Google search term. And we’ll come up pretty rapidly on that. And it’s easy, and give us a call. And it doesn’t have to be a hard and fast quote. If you just want a price comparison, we’d be more than happy to provide that for you.

Todd Schnick: Outstanding. Rosemarie Bristol, marketing and sales manager with American Structures, it was so great to have you. Thanks so much for joining us.

Rosemarie: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Todd Schnick: All right. Well, that wraps this segment. On behalf of our guest, Rosemarie Bristol, my co-host, Todd Youngblood, all of us at Water Online, I am Todd Schnick. We’ll be right back with our next guest.