Earlier this period, we sold the Magnolia plant property, 400 acres for $400,000. In probably our most successful land sale, we sold 120 acres of strip mine property north of Waynesburg for $400,000. In combination with Earl Merrick and Scott Evans, we formed WMT. WMT designed a landfill, obtained the required permits and then auctioned the property to the highest bidder.
We turned complete attend to turning Alliance around, as that was all that was left. We moved the corporate office into the laboratory at Alliance, with the lab moving into the hallway between the office and plant. Lynn and I invited any worker to come in a half-hour before starting time to discuss improvements. Lynn and I were there every day at 6:30 a.m. for the next year. We recorded all suggestions and implemented many. The plant operations started to improve. It was obvious that substantial new production was vital to replace the ladle brick business and bring the plant operations above a break-even point. Since my time with the company, WG had made most of its money supplying the steel business, so we first considered growing volume products such as high alumina ladle brick and bottom pouring refractories. We felt WG had little chance of success producing either product, so we began developing the dry pressed paver to replace the ladle brick business.
