By Troy Newport
On September 26, 2024, with sustained winds of 140 mph, Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Florida panhandle and continued moving northward. Almost 475 miles north, in Asheville, NC, local officials had already spent days planning for Helene’s arrival. Concerns were mounting that flooding from the storm could be catastrophic, as an unrelated front had stalled over the area for days, dropping record rainfall and engorging rivers and streams to flood stage prior to Helene’s arrival.
Preparations
Based on weather reports and the amount of rain that had already fallen, Asheville Paint and Powder Coat Inc. (AP&P), owned by Tom Finger and his immediate family, knew there was a possibility of flooding in their facility. The building is situated near Gashes Creek, an offshoot of the Swannanoa River. Tom started the business in 1995 manufacturing dental chairs. During that time, he says, a lot of medical furniture manufacturers were switching to a powder coated finish. Tom explains, “Because of the AIDS epidemic, dentist’s offices were using all kinds of cleaning agents on their equipment to sterilize it, and liquid paint couldn’t withstand all those chemicals. So, we started powder coating.” As the company evolved, they began manufacturing furniture and powder coating automotive components. Eventually, they sold the dental line and today, the company focuses on furniture manufacturing.
Like many manufacturers and powder coaters, AP&P had numerous customer parts on hand as the storm approached— some already powder coated, many not yet in queue. In fact, they were in the middle of a large job supplying office furniture for Morgan Stanley in NYC when the storm hit. Amidst storm preparations at home, AP&P moved as many parts as they could to a warehouse they own to protect their customers’ inventories.
Meanwhile, almost 100 miles east, outside Charlotte, the owners of R&R Powder Coating were also making storm preparations. Monica and Tim Hayes weren’t aware that their paths would soon cross with someone they had never met before, but whose trucks they had seen out on the highway from time to time.
R&R Powder Coating was founded in 2000 in a 10,000 square foot building with four employees. Monica and Tim purchased the company from Monica’s father and have continued to build the business. Their youngest son, Walker, was interested in working for the family business but wanted to gain outside experience first. He decided he wanted to work for another powder coater in the Charlotte area after he graduated from high school, with the intention of eventually coming back. Tragically, at the age of 17, Walker was killed in a car accident in 2023 before he could put his plans in motion.
They now employ 80 workers who operate out of a 56,000 square foot facility in Dallas, NC, and a newer 92,000 square foot facility in Lincolnton, NC, which houses three batch ovens and two large conveyor systems to powder coat parts largely for the construction, automotive, and industrial sectors.
The Aftermath
In the coming days, scenes of destruction made their way to televisions and social media feeds. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials estimate that through the entire event, 40 trillion gallons of rain overwhelmed the Southeastern U.S. To put that in context, that’s enough water to fill Lake Tahoe, which is 22 miles long, 12 miles wide, and at a maximum depth of 1,644 feet.
Without power, phone service, or internet, Tom says it took two days to chainsaw their way out of the neighborhood to see what was happening in other parts of town. Eventually he made his way to his manufacturing facility to find it had been submerged by flood waters. “The upper-level offices and automatic line got about six feet of water, and the lower portion of the plant got about 10 feet of water,” Tom recalls. Once the flood waters receded, “we were left with at least a foot of mud throughout the facility that would have to be shoveled out by hand.”
As Tom grappled with the fact that three of his workers had major damage to their homes, and the monumental recovery efforts necessary to get his operation back online, he started to brainstorm how he could make sure his customers would be taken care of. He thought perhaps there were other powder coaters in the area that could coat his customers’ parts to keep production schedules intact while he managed the overwhelming tasks at hand. He remembered that a banker he once dealt with was related to a powder coater, so he reached out. Turns out, that banker is related to Monica at R&R Powder Coating. Tom recalls, “My first thoughts were, let me see who has capacity in their plant so I can offload this work to someone else.”
Meanwhile, Monica and Tim at R&R were lucky enough to have escaped major damage at their facilities. The biggest issue they were navigating was the lack of internet access so they could communicate with customers and manage internal systems. Tim remembers, “In the big scheme of things, we didn’t have problems. We had power, we had water, but we have a web-based software that runs our plants; they’re both tied together.” He continues, “I was sending employees home to do data entry where they did have internet. It was a little frustrating for them at times, because no sooner would they get back to the office and something would come up and they would have to drive back home.”
During a conversation with one of his employees, he said, “Just imagine if we left this plant on Friday, and we came back on Monday, and it’s gone.” In that moment, Tim remembered that over the years he had seen a powder coater’s fleet vehicles on the highway. He recalls, “We used to see these trucks out on the interstate that said Asheville Powder on them, and we would joke, ‘What are they doing over here?’ We didn’t really know anything about them.” He pauses and then continues, “This is the God’s honest truth, but I said out loud, ‘I wonder what happened to Asheville Powder? I wonder if it affected them?’ Just as I spoke those words, my father-in-law sends me a text with Tom’s contact information and says, ‘You need to call this guy.’”
Tim called Tom, who initially asked if they had the capacity to take on extra work. At that moment, Tim heard his late son Walker’s voice in his head saying, ‘Dad, you have to do something more for him.’ After some thought, he asked if Tom had workers that could come to R&R’s facility and do the work during a second shift. “I was concerned about their workers,” Tim says. “In our business, your workforce is what makes your business. I immediately started thinking about the workers. How are these people going to survive? They have to work; they have to make a living.”
That’s exactly what happened. Tom says 18 to 20 AP&P employees went to R&R each week and ran jobs on their lines from 2:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., while 12 to 14 employees helped with the monumental task of getting their plant back online. He says Monica and Tim even helped him find lodging for his employees.
Recovery
Tom, his son and plant manager, TJ, and employees started the process of cleaning out the building so they could begin replacing equipment. To wash all the mud out, they dammed up the creek that caused the mess in the first place and pumped water into the plant to hose everything down. It took three weeks to get power and cell service restored, but Tom was lucky enough to get his hands on three Starlink dishes so he could communicate with the outside world. No one would deliver the supplies they needed, so Tom had deliveries sent to the closest place possible and then hauled them in. Meanwhile, he was managing the logistics of getting parts delivered to R&R and then back out to customers.
“We worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks to get things up and running again,” Tom remembers. “We didn’t have drinkable water for eight weeks. We couldn’t go to a restaurant and get lunch; we had to go to Ingles and buy bread and lunch meat and we ate sandwiches all week.”
When asked how far they still have to go, Tom says, “We still don’t have all of our offices back because we had to strip everything—sheet rock, insulation, the environmental room, bathrooms, everything. And rewire the whole plant. We’ve spent over a million dollars to date, and I’ve got quite a bit more to go.” He adds, “Besides all of that, we lost over $300,000 of powder. There have been supply chain issues with powder since COVID anyway, so lead times are longer than they used to be. Some of our powder is formulated specifically for our customers, so you can’t just run out and buy all that and get it back.”
In addition, “All the masking, specialty plugs, stamps, and everything else we use to do our jobs were destroyed. You don’t think about those things until you go to use them and don’t have them. We had built a special platform for the burn off oven and even that floated off and was gone.”
Tom says unexpected issues continue to appear, even after getting the basics up and running. “People told me this would happen, but we would get a line running and it might run for a few days, and then an electrical component or motor would go out. We started one of those lines four or five times before we got it to the state where it is now. I’ve had to replace the same motor on our boiler three times since the flood and never had to replace it before this happened.” Even after cleaning out the facility and installing new equipment, latent moisture can continue causing issues, especially with electrical components.
Monica says that Tom wanted to pay for electricity and the use of their plant, but she and Tim refused. “We said just make a donation to the foundation we started for our son after he died.” In fact, Monica reached out to PCI to see if the association could help spread the word about Tom’s situation in an attempt to get him additional help. Tom refused that help but agreed to tell his story when things settled down.
“R&R… I get emotional when I talk about it,” Tom says as his voice cracks. “We went down there, we finished up the Morgan Stanley job, and kept up with our customers’ parts, and we didn’t end up losing a single customer.” He continues, “What Tim and Monica did…when I tell people that, they can’t believe it. What they did was unbelievable. It was not ordinary. They didn’t know me from Adam, and they let us in there like we owned the place. It saved us. All those guys got their hours, and the people who stayed behind, we worked around the clock up here trying to get ready for the power to go back on.”
“We’re both small business owners, so taking care of each other was number one,” Monica emphasizes. “What I want people to know is that most powder coaters are small businesses and no matter what, we need to help each other out, whether a competitor or not.” Tim adds, “There are bigger things going on than business. I think it’s good for the whole industry that we all work together.”
Troy Newport is publisher of Powder Coated Tough.