The Development of the Truss Plate, Part IV: Competition Intensifies

Issue #14280 - November 2022 | Page #10

By Joe Kannapell

After Cal Jureit’s impressive debut at the 1958 NAHB Show, lumberyards and builders across America were anxious to start trussing, but they encountered several obstacles. Their deluge of inquiries couldn’t all be answered, and most were far away from the South Florida source of supply. If they saw an opportunity to enter the plate business, they faced the formidable obstacles of Jureit’s and Sanford’s patents. And for those who were able to obtain plates, they had to seek out or develop their own machinery. Of the several manufacturers who answered this call, one individual would have the most long-lasting impact, namely, Walter Moehlenpah in St. Louis, Missouri.

Moehlenpah’s mechanical engineering expertise enabled him to gain a Vickers franchise, supplying parts and servicing hydraulic equipment in the Midwest. In the late 1950s, his Moehlenpah Engineering business was called in to fix a truss machine at Boise Cascade’s lumberyard outside St. Louis. After addressing the problem onsite, Moehlenpah’s technician brought back news of the chance to service machinery in a brand-new industry.

Moehlenpah was quick to capitalize on this opportunity, commissioning a veteran mechanical engineer, George Pallme, who had retired from one of his nearby customers, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. Pallme’s first iteration, the Mark 6 Mono-Press, consisted of a C-shaped frame suspended from an overhead power unit. The key to this design was the counterbalancing of the weight of the press by the weight of the hydraulic motor and fluid reservoir, a straightforward task for Pallme, an aircraft designer. The press itself was a relatively lightweight aluminum casting, aimed at trusses with 2x6 or smaller chords. In 1961, Moehlenpah applied for a patent, which he received a year later. The Mono-Press became the entry point into the truss business for hundreds of lumber yards because it readily fit into a typical 50-foot-wide lumber shed, taking up minimal floor space. Despite the immediate success of the Mark 6, Moehlenpah didn’t stop there – he kept expanding the reach of the Mono-Press (literally and figuratively) and at the same time stretching his reach into the truss plate business.

Moehlenpah would often say, using a razor and blade analogy, that he “could make a thousand dollars selling a machine (the razor), but he would make much more if he got a nickel every time it pressed (the blades).” During the early development of his Mono-Press, Moehlenpah also searched for a source of truss plates. He first attempted to buy them from Jureit but balked at the hefty premium over steel prices that Jureit had proposed. That encouraged Moehlenpah to begin working on his own design with a local machine shop. Then Moehlenpah gained access to a plate very similar to one developed by Bill Black Sr., father of Bill Black Jr., who later founded Tee-Lok. Moehlenpah licensed it from W.B. Atkins of Timber Truss Connectors, Inc. in January of 1961, but he didn’t produce it because he had already applied for his own patent. In October 1962, Moehlenpah was awarded a patent on his own design, but he was promptly sued by Gang-Nail, as Atkins had been, in what would become the court case of the century for the plate business.

During the time Moehlenpah was getting into the business, at least a dozen other companies were also seeking entry. While South Florida was the hotbed, players in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Colorado Springs joined the fray. All would eventually have to surmount patent barriers, but their most immediate challenges were brought by building inspectors, who found no guidance on plated trusses in their Codes. The most vocal of these were officials of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA, which is now HUD), the only Code body that had national oversight. FHA had requested that the industry develop and submit a uniform design criterion for plated trusses. After receiving only sporadic individual responses, FHA placed a moratorium on plated truss use after July 31, 1960, unless acceptable design standards were submitted. Since FHA-backed mortgages constituted a large share of new home construction, this decree threatened an entire budding business, then in its infancy.