When the Roof Comes Off: Preparedness, Partnership and Leadership with Michael Luetkenhaus

Kate Truzzolino 00:01

You’re listening to Close Calls: An EHD Insurance Podcast hosted by our President & CEO, Mike Malinowski.

On Close Calls, Mike and his guests explore the near misses and narrow escapes experienced by c-suite executives and business leaders. We want to understand more about the unique risks facing different industries and how to overcome them. What better way to do that than by chatting with the leaders themselves.

And now - here’s your host, Mike Malinowski.

Mike Malinowski 00:27

Hello everyone. I'm Mike Malinowski, President and CEO of EHD Insurance and your host of the Close Calls Podcast.

On this show, we ask real business leaders to unpack their experience navigating overcoming close calls on the job. We ask what went wrong, what saved the day, how did it change the way you lead? Each episode features candid conversation with successful leaders about hidden risks they've navigated through their careers and their companies. Along the way, we'll explore some unique risk facing these industries and our preparation, including some risk management insurance, help turn a close call into a turning point.

Today, I'm extremely excited to be joined by Michael Luetkenhaus, President of Herkules USA Corp. Welcome to the podcast, Michael. How are you today?

Michael Luetkenhaus 01:10

Thanks, Michael. I'm very good and it's a pleasure to be on the podcast with you today.

Mike Malinowski 01:15

Today. Well, thank you so much for taking your time. I'm sure our listeners all love to hear your story. So, if you could start out – even before we start talking about Herkules – tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up here on this podcast.

I know you've come a long way from president of Canada for a long time, and now you're president of the US Global. So, tell us a little bit about your background.

Michael Luetkenhaus 01:39

I will. And first of all, thanks for selecting me in this round of experienced leaders. I'm really honored to be selected in this podcast series.

My name is Michael Luetkenhaus. I'm German. You probably can hear it. I try to hide it as much as I can, but it's not very successful. Like I said, I spent most of my adult life in Germany. I’m a mechanical engineer by trade, and then entered the heavy industrial manufacturing side in a big steel conglomerate in Germany that spent a decade there, learned a lot. And then at one point in 2018, like you mentioned, had the chance for a mid-size German family-owned company to go to Canada, close to Toronto. It was a brownfield project in the long product segment for construction steel where I had the pleasure to ramp up production from almost zero to a significant amount of construction steel per year.

I always joke that is was successful enough that I could afford at this point to buy Herkules equipment. So, I was a customer and I was already very confident in the Herkules brand when I purchased equipment, got to know the ownership through this purchase and after sales. And at one point I was asked if I could imagine packing up the family, packing up the life one more time and move from Canada to the United States to lead the Herkules organization here in Fort City, Pennsylvania, which is a little bit outside of Pittsburgh. Yeah, it was one of the best decisions I made so far in my career and I'm really happy to be here.

Mike Malinowski 03:25

Herkules, it's such a unique operation and it's so interesting getting to know you and learning what you do. I'm a white-collar guy. And by the way, people say I have an accent, Michael, too, so don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, but tell them about all the things you do and how you've grown. I mean, if you go on their website, it's just a tremendous learning experience about some of the unique things that you really do and what you support through the Herkules company.

If you could take about a couple minutes just to describe a little bit about Herkules, and I know a lot of the things they do with roll grinders and lass and things like that. If you could tell our listeners about the products you produce, I think that would really benefit.

Michael Luetkenhaus 04:07

That would be my pleasure. And of course, I'm prepared to talk an hour and a half now about the product portfolio of Herkules, but I try to sum it up and simplify it a little bit. So Herkules is a family-owned German company. We're very experienced in high precision machine tools. So, we're building fairly large machines and we're doing that for a long, long time. It goes all the way back to 1911. So there's a reason why we're really good at what we're doing. And usually our portfolio, I mean, a lot of people probably know CNC machines and high precision machines and I've seen a lot, but we're a true niche provider and we shine whenever work pieces get either fairly large or heavy. And I'm talking about 500 metric tons heavy or up to 12 meters a diameter length of work pieces where we still have capabilities to do high precision machining.

You mentioned roll grinders here in the US. So, we have a fairly large manufacturing network. The main manufacturing sites are of course in Germany, two main ones. And then I'm really proud that the location here in Fort City marks the third largest manufacturing site in our network. We produce the whole roll grinder, roll shop equipment portfolio out of this location here. From a customer base, then we're looking at steel mills, aluminum mills, paper mills. I would say almost every steel mill, and I don't want to name the brands, but you know all the big names, you're going to find Herkules equipment in their roll shops. And then on the other hand, we have a lot of equipment which goes to the energy sector, to the defense ecosystem. And all of the above, you can imagine you talked a little about politics and I really don't want to hijack this podcast talking about politics, but I think, and we are really proud of that, Herkules very early had the vision of manufacturing products for the North American market in North America.

We believe that it is a huge advantage to have a manufacturing site, an engineering department, an after sales team where we have an advantage in comparison to all our competitors. There's no competition, no real competition. As a US manufacturer, everything comes from Europe. And I think we're definitely far ahead when it comes to the presence in the US. And always joke for our North American customers, we're proud to offer Made in America with the only exception, which is myself. And I always joke, I do not turn a wrench when we built this machine here, I promise.

Mike Malinowski 07:07

I'm not a wrench guy either. That's why learning about the things you do is a little above my head. I mean, we can represent you in the insurance marketplace. One thing, Michael, getting to know you, I know you always perk up and a smile comes to face and you talk about a little bit how you met and came in contact with EHD, but I know when we talk about the, I think it's 114 years you've been privately held and in business that you wear that like a badge of honor and you talk about that and how proud you are that the company's built that way.

So, if you could comment a little bit on that, and you mentioned it a little before and how you met us and how you started working with us and our folks out West, that would be great to learn a little bit about that.

Michael Luetkenhaus 07:47

First of all, it's a pleasure having the position, every honor to lead this organization and it's so versatile. We have a high technology driven manufacturing side here, but being the president of our 125 people company, and you know that Michael, you deal with everything. And one pleasure of course is that I have to deal with insurance providers and selection of business partners as well, which I truly enjoy. And I always say, I believe my job is not to make every decision or to build the machines by myself. My job is building an organization where we can strive and mitigate risk wherever we can. And to now look at the insurance company, I'm looking for business partners which have a similar culture. A cultural fit is very important for us. We are a small private health family-owned organization. And looking at EHD at yourself, I think it was a great match because you share the same very similar structure, focus on this mid-size market where we for sure are in.

And there is a cultural fit which makes a big difference than dealing with the large four or five companies out there. And I really appreciate that you and your team becoming part of my team. I don't draw the line that my team defines your Herkules employee or not. All our business partners, I truly believe as more we can make them members of our team, the more successful we are.

Mike Malinowski 09:36

Well, we've loved working with Herkules and our team out in that part of the state. It's just been a great learning spark. You’ve become friends and it's been awesome because we are. Your culture that you've built there at Herkules, we think marries us. We'd love to have customers that are built like us and how to help them.

The podcast for our listeners too, I know we wanted to talk a little bit about your close call per se and the big storm. So, if you could talk a little bit through that because that could have been really disastrous when it happened, but if you can just walk our listeners through what transpired and how that was handled, because I mean you had a lot of equipment that was exposed.

I'll turn it over you to Michael and just let them know how that whole experience happened, the reaction of both Herkules and EHD and your thoughts on the whole process would be great.

Michael Luetkenhaus 10:31

Thank you for that. The storm is probably a good example and probably, I mean insurance, you always often not think about insurance as long as nothing happens. The storm, which happened here in Pennsylvania in the end of April 2025 changed my view on insurance and changed my view on inclining weather conditions significant on a private side as on the business side. And just to maybe give the listeners a little bit of an idea of what happened. So, it was around three, four o'clock in the afternoon when the first iPhone weather warnings came, the ones we always are very, very good in ignoring and say, "Oh, it will not be that bad." I said, "It will not be that bad." I talked to my colleague here, the finance lead and said, "Take care, but it will not be that bad."

So, I drove home at one point and the first one that called was my wife and she said, "It is really bad here. Where are you? Take care of yourself." And we talked a little bit and she said, "Oh, there's a tree falling on our garage. There's a tree on my car. I have to go to the basement with the kids” and hung. That was already a feeling where I said, "Oh, that is not good." At this moment, I parked the car on the 28 –  it's a highway towards Pittsburgh on the spot where there was no trees because I saw it coming and it was bad. It was really bad. It was a bit scary as well. And I think 120 seconds later, I got the call from a colleague at work, which was still at the office and they said, “Michael, we have a problem.” I said, “Oh, there's a second one, right?”

So what happened? The roof flew off. I said, “What do you mean the roof flew off?” Yeah, the roof of the large machine shop is gone. The garage door just blew into the building. Parts of the roof were landing on his car. The power line was involved, so the power line was touching the parts of the roof. So, at this point I had to make a decision where do I go first? Of course, I checked on the family first and it was bad enough that we did not even have the chance to all get back to the plant at this point. There were trees everywhere.

It turned out to be a significant claim and I'm really, really thankful for the support we got from our team. They were here right away and started. They didn't wait for anybody. They start cleaning up, securing everything. Thankfully, nobody got hurt. I was probably lucky that it was at the end of the workday. There were a couple administrative people here, but then was the whole aftermath and insurance of course was a big factor and EHD as a broker played a big important role there as well. And from my point of view, a role in taking stuff off my plate. We always say, we at Herkules are really good at building machines, but I'm not good at insurance. And I always wanted a provider in this case who is there and your people were available for moment one. They were here on site, went through the whole process with us, made sure the documentation was right, guided us through the process.

And like I mentioned earlier with having the private damage as well, cars, garage, et cetera, the business case was of course from the dollar amount way, way higher. The risk of non-production was super high, but it was handled super quick. It was flawless. I think you guys had a good handle on the providers in the end and that was amazing. Not so my private case, which in the end successfully settled as well, but it gave me a good different or a comparison as well.

Mike Malinowski 14:18

Yeah. So then did you move your private stuff over, Michael? I don't know if I asked you that yet.

Michael Luetkenhaus 14:23

Yeah, I did not get an offer yet from you guys.

Mike Malinowski 14:27

We'll have to rectify that. But yeah, I remember that situation and I got called by our claims department home saying, “Hey, we saw it coming, but let's face it, a lot of times the weathers not very accurate.” We were so blessed that no one was hurt in that instance. And the amount of inventory or equipment that you have and with the roof blown off to get that taken care of right away, I know we learned from it too how to be very reactive with things like that because you don't realize how much exposure that Herkules had. So, your team was great to work with too. I just think it was a great collaborative effort. I think because of similar cultures. We understood that you needed this taken care of and you guys helped us along the way through the process. So, thank you so much for sharing that experience and let's hopefully know iPhone alerts today.

Michael Luetkenhaus 15:19

I was shaking when this other storm was coming. And we had a lot of storms this year, right? Thankfully, knock on wood, everything went well.

Mike Malinowski 15:29

Yeah, so far so good. Yeah, knock on wood for sure. The one last thing I like to end it with, Michael, before I let you go back doing the wonderful work that you guys are doing is I always like to talk about some of the things that Herkules does and sponsors outside of just making stuff. And I think it's overseas that I was reading about that was really impressive for our listeners was the Children's Island. I think it's referred to for younger children, I think that you guys help support along with artists and culture that you guys are involved in. Can you just talk a little bit about some of the other things that Herkules gets involved with that isn't just production? Because you guys give a lot back too. And I think it's important for our listeners to know not just the stuff you do to help pay the bills, but what else you do for your communities across, quite frankly, the world, not just here in the States.

Michael Luetkenhaus 16:28

Yeah. I can talk a little bit about it, but often in this structures where we operate in, of course, all these decisions where to put our larger charity engagements is done by my German colleagues in the headquarter.

But of course we're trying to be part of that as well. I mean, in the end, we're a small company. We're 16, probably around 1,500 people worldwide, 125 here. We're not a large player, but still I believe, and we're doing that very well in the ecosystem in Germany around the headquarter in Siegen, Germany where we're living, that we're trying to be part of the community. And I'm still, even if I feel pretty settled, I'm only two and a half years in my position here, and we're actually right now starting to become more active. I took a lot of time in the past 20 months to get to know the area where we're living, which is a true rural area of Pennsylvania, which is unique, which I had to learn as well how people think, how communities operate, what needs are there.

But we are the second largest employer in Ford City. We have the means to serve the company not only as a very sustainable and secure employer, but like I said, we want to be part of the community as well. There's the 5K run here for a good community where we have a growing team which runs the 5K and where we are main sponsor as well. And I'm actually in the process a little bit of selecting organizations and things where we would be more engaged here in US as well, but I'm sure we are definitely going to grow that. And I always want, A, I want to give back. I want to be part of a community and I want people to know about us. Like you said earlier, we're here hidden a little bit at the Allegheny River, and it's not a picture. I'm really sitting right at the river.

Tons of people walk by every day, but nobody really knows what's happening behind these walls. And there's wonderful things happening, and it's always a great chance being engaged in the community to bring your name out there and to have more people click on the website, more people click on the LinkedIn channel and grow. We are really in growth mode here.

Mike Malinowski 19:01

Well, I know you are in heavy growth mode and our listeners, I'm sure they'll go out and Google and search Herkules and learn more and more about it, Michael.

So, I just want to thank you so much, Michael, for joining me on today's episodes of Close Calls, for sharing your experience, insights, your background. It's so unique and we're so proud as a company to call you a customer and a friend.

And I want to take a moment to thank our incredible audience for listening. We have an inspired lineup of guests in our first season, and we hope you tune into more episodes in the future. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, rate, review, and share the podcast.

And once again, thank you, Michael Luetkenhaus for your time today. Until next time, everyone, thanks again for listening. I'm Mike Malinowski, president of EHD Insurance, and tune in next time.

Thanks again.

Kate Truzzolino 19:56

Thank you for listening to this episode of Close Calls, an EHD Insurance podcast with Mike Malinowski. To hear future episodes of Close Calls, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more about EHD insurance, please visit www.ehdinsurance.com.