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Bailey-Parks Urethane, Inc.

Bailey-Parks Urethane • 800-238-7638http://www.baileyparks.com

FOR MORE THAN 40 YEARS, BAILEY-PARKS HAS BEEN PROVIDING SOLUTIONS IN URETHANE

Reprinted from Grain Journal May/June 2014 Issue

"Go read the sign.”

That’s the response General Manager Brian Tutor of Bailey-Parks Urethane, Inc. in Memphis, TN, offers whenever the question has come up of whether or not the company should ship an order to a customer. His answer may sound corny (no pun intended), but the simplicity and conviction behind it is what has helped guide the company to long-term success in the grain industry and other industries that it serves.

“I know this sounds goofy, but I’ll tell you: when we’re in the shop, and we’re talking to somebody, and they say, ‘Should we ship that?’ I say, ‘Well, let’s go outside. There’s a sign out front – I want you to read it. What does it say?’” recalls Tutor, who joined the company in 1982. “‘Quality urethane products.’ Does it meet that criteria? No? Then we don’t ship it. It’s not something that we want to do. We really believe in that.”

While Tutor says that a lot of other companies may ship out an order that’s less than perfect and hope no one notices, he says with conviction: “That’s not us.”

What, then, is Bailey-Parks Urethane? As its name indicates, the company is a fabricator of a wide array of standard urethane products such as sheets, pads, rods, and tubes.

Bailey-Parks is a supplier of sheeting products to the grain industry, perhaps best known for its trademarked Diamondback® polyurethane liners and sheets that are available in a variety of standard sizes and hardness, providing effective resistance to impingement and frictional abrasion.

According to Tutor, the company’s Diamondback ceramic chip urethane sheets are very effective in applications that transport sharp particles or high volumes of abrasive material and feature a higher ceramic-to-urethane ratio per sheet than competitive products. Diamondback sheets meet FDA standards for dry food handling and cushion grain, feed, and other materials from breakage. Produced using computerized casting and monitoring equipment, Bailey-Parks, says Tutor, also checks every lot both during the pour and after the final cure to ensure ultimate tensile strength.

Its line of products also includes metal-backed sheets with 16-gauge steel and a cotton-backed fabric that can be adhered to other substrates as well as fastening solutions that offer superior wear and leakage resistance up to 1,200 psi.

One of the things that sets Bailey-Parks Urethane apart from similar products on the market, says Marketing Director Jesse Lucas, is its ability to produce sheets in large sizes.

“What differentiates us is really the size of our sheets – our material combinations and ranges of different durometers and thicknesses that we can offer, as far as the combination of all of those ingredients,” he says. “We can manufacture a sheet, if a customer needs it – a one-piece without seaming anything together, about 11 feet wide by 50 feet long. So it’s our capabilities, how much we can produce at one time, and the size we can produce,” he explains.

A History of Diversification

Bailey-Parks Urethane has its roots firmly planted in Memphis, but its beginnings were far removed from grain handling. In 1969, under founder and CEO Joe Bailey, the company began manufacturing press-on tires for the Fairmont Railway Motor Company that helped solve an operational problem, failing rubber tires that made railroad service equipment operable for only a few hours each day. Urethane tires from Bailey-Parks enabled the railway to continue operating around the clock, and soon after, the company began recovering industrial rollers and wheels used in the manufacturing of housing products such as paneling, plywood, composite roofing and pre-finished molding.

An in-house stripping and grinding setup was added later to the operation, as well as a machine shop, which eventually led to a metal fabricating department and then to building custom equipment. Bailey-Parks then expanded into a full line of forklift wheels, press-on tires, and glue and glycerin rollers.

From there, the company continued growing and diversifying making custom urethane parts for automotive industry assembly plants, and from the late 1970s through the 1980s and under the direction of the current President and CEO Scott Bailey, it began serving the grain handling, food processing, and mining industries, which currently represent about half of the company’s business.

Nearly 100% of the company’s tooling is done in-house using steel, aluminum, and composite materials, and Bailey-Parks can create plastic injection molds, compression molds, and centrifugal casting molds. Bailey-Parks has partnered with several local shops that offer wire electrical discharge machining (EDM) and laser and waterjet cutting technologies that enable it to produce steel or aluminum inserts that can be bonded to or incorporated into urethane parts. These local partnerships, says Lucas, also enable the company to deliver quick turnaround times and exceptional value to its customers.

Expanding Customer Base Internationally

Today, Bailey-Parks makes urethane products that are used in hundreds of applications around the world. Lucas, who has been with the company since April 1992, says the company’s customer base is primarily domestic, but Bailey-Parks has expanded into Canada, South America, and partners with a company in The Netherlands to stock their products as well.

But the company isn’t just about selling products to customers and then ending the transaction. According to Tutor and Lucas, the company is currently in the process of developing a series of instructional videos pertaining to the grain industry and material handling, in the hopes of educating the customer base and becoming a resource for them as well. (Look for the videos on YouTube later this year.)

For example, Tutor says Bailey-Parks gets calls from existing or potential customers who have questions about product applications or a problem they’re trying to solve. Bailey-Parks feels it can address this in an instructional video to help them to find the information they need before making a purchasing decision.

“The customer has a wear issue and wants to solve it and calls Bailey-Parks, because we’re authorities in that industry,” says Tutor. “Ultimately, we want to sell that customer, but first we want to become a partner and authority on the subject and then let the customer make the choice of who he or she purchases from.”

Bottom Line

In the end, what Bailey-Parks wants to be known for is the quality of its products and the manner in which the company sells and services the grain industry.

“We make a consistently good product,” Tutor says. “We’re honest, and we do what we say and say what we do. We’re in for the long haul, and I think that’s the difference,” he adds.

Tutor explains that customers in the industry know the reputation that Bailey-Parks has established throughout the years, and that the company will stand behind its products. “We don’t just make the sale and say, ‘You bought it, you’re on your own.’ We back it up with customer service and technical know-how,” he says.

Lucas adds that the official company motto is “solutions, not problems,” and “that to me embodies what Brian just said and everything we do from a quality and honesty perspective, because both things, when lacking, lead to problems. And we’re all about solutions and solving our customers’ problems.”


About Bailey-Parks Urethane

Memphis, TN
800-238-7638
901-774-7930
http://www.baileyparks.com

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