Jim Coulson This Man Of Steel Leads Company Into Record Earnings

Standing in the board room of the Coeur d’Alenes Co., President Jim Coulson is surrounded with reminders of the steel company’s worst moments.

One wall displays a picture of a magnificent steel bridge over Montana’s Lake Koocanusa. Coeur d’Alenes helped erect the structure years ago in an ambitious project that triggered a collapse into bankruptcy.

A photograph of Mount St. Helens erupting in May 1980 reminds Coulson that the mountain wasn’t the only thing to blow that month. It also was the time when union workers organized a three-week strike against Coeur d’Alenes.

“I keep these right in front of me,” the 63-year-old Navy veteran says, moving from photo to photo as if viewing a war memorial. “They say if you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it. In business, nothing is truly different. You just replay old events.”

For Coulson, a white-haired survivor of the vastly restructured steel industry, that means never making the same mistake twice.

So Coeur d’Alenes won’t build satellite dishes for Spain and Australia as it did in the 1960s. It won’t build skywalks as it did for Spokane in the 1970s. And it probably won’t provide steel for sculptures as it did for David Govedare’s Riverfront Park runners.

Rather, the family-controlled business is content to be one of the Inland Northwest’s largest steel fabricators and distribution centers, with 1,000 wholesale customers from the Cascades to Rocky Mountains.

The company builds 8-foot crucibles for Northwest Alloys in Addy, Wash., and aluminum bottoms for Snake River jet boats. And it sells just about any size and shape of steel imaginable out of its set of twin, 562-foot long buildings at 3900 E. Broadway.

Coeur d’Alenes recently moved to the site from the Spokane Business and Industrial Park to consolidate with its subsidiary, Stock Steel.

“Jim has survived a great many things,” says William Griffith, past chairman of Hecla Mining Co. and a retiring member of the Coeur d’Alenes board of directors. “At the moment, things are looking pretty bright for him.”

Coeur d’Alenes Cos. revenue and profits were up in the most recent quarter to $3.4 million and $140,000, respectively. And Coulson has plans to generate more revenue by marketing son David Coulson’s invention for a protective railroad tarp, and contracting with other companies to unload rail-bound steel at Coeur d’Alenes covered loading dock and overhead crane, where there’s no danger of rust. The company also sells camper steps, steel grates and other pieces to the public through a retail outlet on Broadway.

“Our business activity is a barometer for local business strength,” says Coulson, who lives on 10 acres behind Browne’s Mountain and enjoys writing short stories.

The 112-year-old company, with about 80 employees, generates an annual payroll of $2.9 million.

However, it remains locked in a dispute with 18 members of the Ironworkers Local 506 who have been without a labor contract for 15 months. Edward Cottongim, the international district representative for the Seattle-based local, says Coeur d’Alenes wants the right to hire non-union workers and pay low wages.

“He is simply anti-union,” Cottongim says of Coulson.

Coulson, who serves on the boards of the Inland Northwest Bank and Spokane Area Economic Development Council, says that’s not true. He says he needs an “open shop” because the union does not provide enough skilled workers when he needs them, hindering his ability to be competitive.

Coulson joined Coeur d’Alenes in 1960 before finishing his degree at the University of Idaho. The company at that time was based in Wallace, surrounded by the mountains for which it was named.

The Boise native vowed early on to “buy this company.” Wallace mining magnate Harry Magnuson gave Coulson a jump on his dream by loaning him $2,400 to begin buying shares in the company.

Coulson never stopped buying, compiling 2 million shares during the next 35 years. He now controls 36 percent of the company. Another 18 percent is owned by his ex-wife, Arlene Coulson, the company’s investor relations manager, and son, Larry Coulson, who calls himself “coach” of Stock Steel.

“I buy as many shares as I can get,” says the elder Coulson, who earned $140,000 in salary and bonus in 1995.

The company’s steel service center moved in 1966 to Spokane. But over-expansion forced Coeur d’Alenes into bankruptcy two years later.

“I had only one thing in mind and that was to save the company,” says Coulson, who was named general manager and helped reorganize the company.

Coeur d’Alenes’ shares trade on the NASDAQ electronic bulletin board for about 18 cents a share. That’s one third of book value, or the value of assets if the company were sold. There are 2,300 shareholders.

Coulson confesses he has a reputation for forgetting details, including his own appointments. But he’s a stickler for remembering the history of Coeur d’Alenes.

“That’s why this company is run so carefully and quietly,” he says. “We know what can happen.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo