Titan Wheel Is Living Up to Its Name : Manufacturing: In 10 years, the company, which makes more off-road wheels than any other firm in the world, has grown steadily and acquired other plants.

A decade ago, this city was home to an abandoned factory and 1,200 unemployed metalworkers. The factory now houses the world’s largest maker of off-road wheels, and employs 700 local people.

In 10 short years, Titan Wheel Co. has earned its name.

Company officials and industry observers say Titan climbed to the top of its obscure heap by concentrating on wheel-making, controlling costs and quality, and watching for opportunities to buy similar companies.

The company has grown steadily and acquired four other plants, including one in England. Besides the 700 Quincy employees, Titan has about 500 workers elsewhere.

It makes more off-road wheels--not those rubber tires, but the metal wheels underneath--than any other company in the world.

Its products are used on huge mining trucks and small garden tractors, Army tanks and Caterpillar backhoes.

“We understood the business and thought we could serve the market with a quality product at a good price,” recalls company Vice President Russell Ash, who helped turn the shuttered factory into a going concern.

“We did pretty good. We did real good, in fact.”

So well, he says, that whether you look at sales, factory size or product line, Titan is the biggest company of its kind in the world.

Titan’s success began with Firestone Tire & Rubber’s failure.

The tire maker owned the Quincy plant but couldn’t make a profit. It sold the plant to a Canadian industrialist and an American wheel-making expert, who dubbed their new company Can-Am.

Can-Am had a factory filled with equipment but no employees to make wheels and no customers to buy them.

The company carefully trained potential employees and hired the best of them, Ash said. Engineers and quality-control experts ensured wheels came off the assembly line in perfect shape.

That first year, the company sold $15 million worth of wheels, Ash said. That has now climbed to $120 million.

Much of its product initially went to established wheel-makers who couldn’t manufacture fast enough to fill the void left by Firestone. That made it easier to win customers: Salespeople went out and showed potential customers they already used wheels made by Can-Am.

The company’s Canadian ownership bowed out in the early 1990s, the same period in which the new name Titan was chosen. Finally, the company went public in May, selling 2.7 million shares of stock.

Kay Falk, editor of the Wisconsin-based trade journal OEM Off-Highway, said Titan has grown while the wheel-making industry has shrunk. She attributed its strength to the company’s emphasis on quality, its focus on wheel-making and its buying complementary businesses.

“The (new) management group had enough experience to know what they had to do to make it work,” she said.

Titan supplies wheels to other companies, so sales are limited by its customers’ success.

Titan is keeping an eye on the European market, ready to expand there if those nations settle their currency and trade differences.

But until then, the company focuses on acquiring other businesses--”picking up the things people throw away,” as company President Maurice Taylor calls it.

One acquisition was a Danville, Ill., computer and automation company. Titan’s Quincy plant--filled by the clank and rumble of machinery--now contains a few shiny computers that simplify wheel-making.

Titan is branching out somewhat by buying Dyneer Corp., which sells $150 million worth of axles, brakes and tires annually. The acquisition, if approved by stockholders, will let the company begin selling wheels with tires already mounted.

Quincy officials and residents praise Titan for investing in the area, and creating blue-collar jobs.

Jim Nauert, union representative for Machinists Lodge 822, said the Quincy plant’s employees seem generally content. While their salaries aren’t extravagant, he said, workers get plenty of overtime.

Three of Titan’s plants--including the Quincy plant--are non-union. Ash said the company stresses training and communication between labor and management.