Paul Mai in his shop (courtesy photo)
A Canadian film crew is shooting footage of a manufacturing plant where specialized steel products are being fabricated. Their topic involves remarkable tubular steel and building products, and to do this story, they had to come to this company in rural Kansas.
Last week we met the late Paul Mai, founder of several companies including MaiCo Industries – the subject of the Canadian film. The plant manager of MaiCo Industries is Dave Cox.
Cox grew up in southern Kansas and Oklahoma. He worked for a steel warehouse in western Kansas where he learned to weld and work with various metals. He also met and married his wife. They have four children, all of whom earned degrees from Kansas State University.
They moved to Solomon where he applied for a job at a Salina welding shop owned by Paul Mai.
“(Mai) took me on for what was initially going to be two or three months,” Cox said. “I ended up working for him for more than 30 years. I was very blessed to have him as a mentor.”
Mai expanded his businesses through the years. In 1995, he founded MaiCo Industries in Ellsworth. “The City of Ellsworth was very helpful,” Cox said.
MaiCo’s original facility consisted of approximately 50,000 square feet. The company specialized in built-up, three-plate rigid frames utilized in the metal building industry.
“In 2001, we diversified,” Cox said. “There was an expanding need for cell towers so we moved into manufacturing multi-sided tubular poles for cell and utility towers.”
As the pole division grew, more fabrication space was added in 2015.
Currently, MaiCo Industries has 115,000 square feet of production space. The company processes 1 million pounds of steel coils, all of which is made in the USA. The company is a leading manufacturer of poles, structures and skids.
In addition to cell towers, the company’s poles are used as traffic and signal poles, lighting poles, utility poles, wind towers and more. MaiCo also manufactures bridge tub and plate girders, transportation signs and industrial skids plus buildings.
“We do a lot of custom steel fabrication here. We build open span structures commonly used in airplane hangars and sports facilities,” Cox said.
Examples include indoor practice facilities for such football teams as K-State, the Las Vegas Raiders and the New York Giants.
Another structural steel example is an eight-story building that is going to Florida to be used by NASA and Space X to house rockets.
Overhead steel highway signs are another specialty, built to the exacting standards of various state’s departments of transportation.
As noted last week, MaiCo Industries is part of the Mai family of companies. “There’s a synergy between the companies so we can work together to help each other,” Cox said. Founder Paul Mai’s daughter Frieda Mai-Weiss is president of the company.
In 2023, MaiCo Industries was named Manufacturing and Distribution state winner by the Kansas Department of Commerce in the To the Stars: Kansas Business Awards.
“We are very proud to be a Made in Kansas fabricator,” Cox said. “We take very seriously being made in Kansas – the great State of Kansas – and in the USA,” he said. “The current tariffs have leveled the playing field for us and we’re in a better position than we were.”
“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished here,” Cox said.
The company’s success is so remarkable that it attracted the attention of a Canadian film crew that came to Ellsworth to record an episode of How It’s Made, a history and science show in Canada that makes documentaries.
“Our products literally go coast-to-coast and sometimes they’re shipped abroad,” Cox said.
It’s an impressive record for a company in the rural community of Ellsworth, population 3,066 people. Now, that’s rural.
For more information about the company, go to www.maicoind.com.
It’s time to say goodbye to Ellsworth where a Canadian film crew was shooting video about this remarkable company in rural Kansas. We commend Frieda Mai-Weiss, Dave Cox, and all those involved with MaiCo Industries for making a difference with innovation and hard work in the steel industry.
From cell towers to eight-story rocket buildings, that’s a tall order.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at https://www.huckboydinstitute.
