(By Regina Lorenz, Osmond Republican) OSMOND — A longtime Osmond business is changing hands, but the owner didn't go far to find them. Dennis Schultze, owner of Dd Steel, will be turning over the reins to his son, Tim. But Dennis isn’t going far.
"I don't know that I'm retiring," Dennis explained. "It's just things have changed on paper.”
Dd Steel had its beginnings 40 years ago, in 1984, when Dennis Schultze and Don Blecha formed the welding and steel work partnership, and became official a year later. It was never meant to be a business, Dennis said. It started out as a hobby, carried out in Dennis’ farm shop two miles north of Osmond.
“Don had access to some of the people I needed, salesmen, things like that,” Dennis explained.
At the time, Dennis was also farming, but worked at the business almost daily. Don eventually stepped away from the business when he got a job teaching at Plainview.
“It was really the right choice for him,” Dennis said.
Things really haven’t changed a lot over the years, he said. There were some jobs that the business saw for a while but then never saw them again.
They have a lot of different ideas all the time, and they do a lot of work for Aschoff Construction. They can do a lot of industrial manufacturing jobs, too.
One thing that has changed is that they now have a CNC plasma table.
"That's what we use to cut all our benches," son Tim clarified. "You make the design on the computer and then the plasma table cuts them.”
Some of the first benches, seen all around Osmond, included the ones near Security Bank, which were done around 2008. One memorable project included building Immanuel Lutheran Church’s new bell tower.
"We've done everything from fixing a beater on an egg beater to working on locomotive engines,” Dennis laughed.
Tim isn’t planning any changes with the business. “I guess the goal is to just stay busy,” he said, although besides this and farming, he also works at Aschoff Construction. He usually gets back to the farm around 3:30 p.m., and then works in the shop “until about bedtime.”
“He’s the work horse,” Dennis said about his son. The two are also joined by Tim’s son, Hudson, who graduated from Osmond High School in 2023.
As far as any “spare” time Dennis might have, he joked that if he gets down to 40 hours per week, he might feel retired.
Dennis commented that he considers it quite an accomplishment that this business has been handed down three generations.
Quite an accomplishment indeed, for something that was supposed to be a hobby.
