MRN BIZ SPOT PAUL REITZ

Thank you, good to be here.

Absolutely. Because you remember, while we have Titan, we have of course Titan wheel here. Titans all over the country, all over the world. Have you been across the pond any lately? I have, and that's a little more adventuresome now than it used to be. So you don't just skip across the pond that easily. No, it's an ordeal. It is. But now I happen to go, I haven't had to go back to China yet. So I've had some colleagues of mine that have had to do that, and luckily they made it back and forth without any issues. And you didn't get quarantined for two weeks. That's good. Eight by eight room. Well, that's good.

Exactly, yeah. I know it's good. Who gave that to you again? Well, it was through E&Y. Okay, yeah. Luckily they didn't require me to spell it to win the award. But no, it's an honor for Titan. Our company has overcome a tremendous amount of challenges and we've done a great job. Got an excellent team. If you look at the core group of 30 people that Titan around the world, we've all been working together now for a number of years and we've been through those hard moments. And when you're going through those moments, that's when people have a tendency to spit the negative in your face, the naysayers, the criticism. You hear a lot of that. This team has really persevered and done a great job. So to win this award, it's really on behalf of the 7,500 people of Titan around the world who have done a tremendously good job and worked their ass off every day.

Good. I mean, it's about people and we got a great group of people here in Quincy. They manufacture the world's best products at what they do. A key part of our business, but more importantly, it's a key part of the agriculture supply chain in this country. You know, we're in the heart of it right here in Illinois and what they do is incredibly important. Our customers, and I think that's one thing we've really learned through the last few years, is that when the pandemic was upon us, the team here in Quincy and really the team at all of Titan's plants, when we had to continue to operate during the pandemic, we serviced our customers, but we service them with great products. And the folks here in Quincy are the best in the world at that.

We are, yeah. I mean, we need to invest and innovate. Here in Quincy and our plants around the world, we continue to invest in our plants, our people. We're putting innovative products into the hands of the end users of the large agriculture construction equipment that our customers put out into the marketplace. And so I think we're doing a good job with that. Our LSWs continue to do a phenomenal job. They make equipment perform better and they've really gained acceptance not just across where it started as the big stuff, you know an LSW is five sure wide, but we're bringing LSW into a broad array of products and it's being accepted very well within the aftermarket where we really set the roots with connecting the LSW directly to the end user. But now the OEM acceptance has been great and again it continues to grow and perform very well.

But you know, nationwide and worldwide, yeah, no you're right and that's a good point. We all live in our local communities and we focus on what's going around us, but that's a global issue. You could talk about hiring, retaining people. If you brought that topic on the table, all of our 20 locations around the world almost give you the exact same response. And so I think at Titan we've done a good job. And that's evident because we've been able to take care of our customers. And we have a great group of people, great leadership team here at Titan. We are constantly focused on how do we recruit, how to retain better. And it's not anything like it was five years ago, not even going back 20 years ago. Just go back five years ago, how you recruit, how you retain in today's world is completely different. But I do think that'll continue to evolve.

No, not at all.

It's a mix, yeah. Our business was different because we were required to operate during the pandemic. So you had some companies that immediately went into a shutdown mode and you're just kind of trying to preserve people without anything to do. We were the opposite. The governments, and again this is true around the world, the government said you guys are servicing agriculture and construction, you're critical, so we had to keep operating. So that's where our team really stepped up. They found a way to make it work. And I'll never forget right in the middle of the pandemic, like May of 2020, I'm at our location in Des Moines and talking to a few folks in the office and I'm talking to the director of our customer service department. I said, look, you guys can work from home, you could mix it up. And the director looked at me and said, we're good, we know our customers are counting on us, we figured out how to bring in our lunch on our own, and we said we're going to make it work. And that mentality is really what has prevailed up until today. We just make it work. And so I do think the flexibility is a good thing. I think we've learned a lot that there's different ways to work. So have we changed our approach to work for the office? Yes, we have. It's a good hybrid mix. But we have found the folks at Titan will make it work however it needs to be done. And we've been successful really from the beginning this way. So I think it's a win-win for the employees, for the company, and we'll continue on that path. I think it's here to stay. We've learned a lot.

That's a good question. Sorry, I didn't aim to play stump the CEO. Did it? Yeah, exactly. Still entrepreneur? No, no, no. I didn't ask. I didn't smell right. I think we're right around a thousand. Twelve hundred range depending on season, depending on workload or whatever. But still, it is a longtime place of employment here at Quincy. It's provided good jobs for men and women for many years. And I know it's something that the community has always been proud of. When you see that Titan wheel or that Titan tire all over the country, or you see those trucks on the road.

That's a good point. I think the people at Quincy should be proud of what Titan does. You know, when they're driving down the road and they see a John Deere piece of equipment, those yellow wheels, there's a high likelihood they're made here in Quincy. And what that John Deere equipment is doing is very important to not just our country but to the world. Yeah, and I'm glad to see that. I think here in Quincy they're starting to recognize the importance of that. And I think it's not just Quincy but the U.S. is recognizing that manufacturing is important. Making stuff is something we want to do, we need to do, and we should be doing. And you know, you went through a period there where it was all about technology and designing apps for your phone was like that was going to be the cure-all for everything. And I think over the last 12, 18 months, our country's really doing a good job of waking up. In fact, you see the amount of money that's being invested into construction spending to build new plants is extremely high. So even though the residential markets are slowing down, the construction spending for new plants, for new construction opportunities in the U.S., new manufacturing opportunities in the U.S. is really growing. And I think what we do at Titan is a great example. It's real manufacturing. Our folks work extremely hard building great products and it's important.

Absolutely. That's a great career and great opportunity for people. And you could have a really good career in manufacturing.

They are. You're exactly right, they're huge. And you think about the weight of the equipment that are riding on that. So how good our team in Quincy has to be at the product engineering, the industrial engineering to put together the tooling. The maintenance teams have to do an incredible job maintaining the equipment. Then of course the operators that make it all happen with building the wheels. And our supply chain, getting the steel, that's one thing that gets overlooked. I mean, just getting that steel, it's a pretty heavy component. It's the heaviest material known to Earth with iron ore. And we got to bring the steel in, we got to get it processed, it comes into the plant, we do further processing on it, then we roll it, we weld it, we press it. We have 5,000-ton presses all over the plant that are forming this steel. So it is an impressive operation and again a real impressive group of people that are doing it. And it's really hot too.

Yeah, we try to keep them hydrated. That's what we got to do.

We're doing well, good. Yeah, in fact, next week I've got an interview with a magazine that's putting an article about doing business in Illinois out. And yeah, I have positive things to say. We have a great workforce in Illinois in Freeport, here in Quincy, obviously in our Chicago office. A good group of people. They've been able to meet all the needs of our business. We are a global publicly traded company, so we do have certain requirements that can be stringent in areas of our business. And we have a great team. And we have a lot of folks employed here in Illinois. So the kind of prelude into the interview for next week, I definitely will say positive things about doing business here in Illinois.

Now I can say the reality is everything I already just said. We've built a great workforce, we run two very large plants in Illinois, have a great team up in Chicago. All that's working very well for us. But it's scary when the politicians say things that are in their own self-interest, they're very politicized. So I think locally though, you mentioned Kyle Moore, he recognizes, he's done a great job working with him for a number of years, recognizing the importance of business in the area. So yeah, there's good things going on in Quincy.