At the age of 26, John M. (Jack) Hauck founded Tubular Steel in February of 1953. Jack used his savings, borrowed an additional $5,000 from his father, rented space for $21 a month in the Railway Exchange Building in downtown St. Louis, and started selling round electric welded tubing. His initial approach was to find a user who needed steel, and then to buy the material. Soon he started purchasing the tubing and storing the steel in leased space. As Jack expanded the business he added additional product lines in order to sell into different industries.
John C. Hauck started working for Tubular Steel full-time in 1973, becoming President of the company from 1988 through 2000. John turned Tubular Steel into a national distributor of steel pipe and tubing with 350 employees, and eight distribution centers servicing more than 10,000 customers coast-to-coast. “Jack’s philosophy of reinvesting in the business to continually diversify into new product lines, and new geographies remains our core belief,” noted Hauck, who is currently serving as President & CEO of TSI Holding Company. “Just as we’ve invested, and grown in steel distribution, we wanted to determine if we could invest in other businesses and grow them using the same core philosophy.”
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