ADRIAN — A $43.4 million investment in its future will significantly expand Adrian Steel’s operations in its hometown.

The 112,000-square-foot expansion — the largest in the company’s history — will replace a parking lot and take the building, located at 906 James St., almost out to Beecher Street. A new parking lot will be constructed on the site of the recently demolished Goodwill building on Beecher.

At least 40 new jobs are expected to be created over the next five years as a result of the expansion.

“It allows us to add the capacity and equipment we need for the future, and lay out the floor plan efficiently so it flows the way we need it to,” CEO Marc Jackson said.

The expansion is the latest chapter in a history of growth for Adrian Steel, which is a national leader in automotive aftermarket equipment and commercial cargo management solutions for the skilled trades. 

It has more than 900 employees in 17 locations around the U.S. and Canada. The Adrian facility employs 527 people.

“Adrian is the leading brand in the industry, and we want to improve on that in the future,” Jackson said. “We want to build our brand recognition.”

The company’s extensive portfolio includes shelving, drawers, cabinets, partitions, ladder racks, toolboxes for commercial vans and light-duty trucks, and many other items.

Its products are quite familiar to skilled tradespeople such as plumbers, electricians, HVAC installers, painters, utility workers, and contractors.

But members of the general public might well have used Adrian Steel equipment without even realizing it. The company also upfits vans for U-Haul, installing the van’s partition, side posts, and more.

While the company has long been known as a commercial van upfitter, “we’re trying to grow our light-duty truck business,” Jackson said.

For example, it just unveiled the Open Bed Service Truck system, a modular cap that, thanks to Adrian Steel’s lean manufacturing process, “can ship on a pallet in five days,” Jackson said. Similar products from other companies might takes as long as 20 weeks to produce, he added.

The company also recently launched a roll-up door for truck caps, joining hatch door and barn door styles in the lineup.

Each type of equipment Adrian Steel makes is designed with the end user in mind. “It’s not about a product” as such, Jackson said. “It’s about the solutions we create for our mobile trades. … It’s about improving the efficiency of these mobile professionals and helping them be safe on the job.”

Adrian Steel traces its more than seven-decade history back to a former football player named Robert Westfall.

Westfall was a standout player on both the collegiate and pro levels. Nicknamed “Bullet Bob,” he was an All-American fullback and team captain for the University of Michigan Wolverines and then served in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

When his military service was complete, he took his considerable football skills to the Detroit Lions, for whom he played from 1944 to 1947 and earned All-Pro honors in 1945.

After he retired, he and his wife, Suzy, moved to Adrian, where he went to work at his brother-in-law’s business, a glorified junkyard on College Avenue called the Adrian Salvage Co.

But he didn’t leave football behind entirely. He coached the Adrian High School and Adrian Catholic Central football teams as well as the local semi-pro team, The Big Reds. That team went 19-4-3 between 1948 and 1950 and in the 1950 season was not only unbeaten, but also unscored upon.

In 1953, Westfall decided to branch out into a business that handled structural steel, steel fabrication, and other niche endeavors. Even though he knew almost nothing about such things, he did know about overcoming personal obstacles and was confident he could learn the rest of what it would take.

With the help of U-M’s legendary football coach Fritz Crisler, who was a father figure to him and who would become the company’s first board chair, Adrian Steel started a steady rise.

Two years after its founding, the company moved from its original 41- by 50-foot building at 421 College Ave. to a new location at 235 W. Maple Ave. Just two years after that, in 1957, it moved to a 14,292-square-foot facility at the site of its current home on James Street.

The youngest of Westfall’s three children, Harley, took over the company upon his father’s death and oversaw a period of major growth in product offerings and sales revenue.

Harley stepped aside as president in 2006 and became chairman of the board, but a number of factors led him to return to the leadership in 2020 — bringing the employee-oriented philosophy he had learned from his father back with him.

“It’s very much our culture,” Jackson said of that philosophy. “It’s very much ingrained in us that it’s a family environment. It’s always felt like that.”

Adrian Steel employees voted the company as a Detroit Free Press Top Work Place in 2025. Many of those workers have been with the company for a long time — 30, 40, or even close to 50 years in some cases.

Jackson himself started out on the shop floor 31 years ago, taking on progressively more responsible roles over time. He moved to Kansas City to become general manager of the company’s facility there, and then in 2023 returned to Adrian to become chief operating officer before being named CEO earlier this year.

“It’s pretty much all I’ve known,” he said of working for Adrian Steel.

Besides being one of the region’s major employers, the company works hard to give back to the community it calls home. Its charitable giving committee allocates funds to many local organizations, and its community efforts include an annual food drive that in one recent year alone donated 92,000 pounds of goods to the county’s food banks.

“Harley always said it was a two-way street,” Jackson said. “We benefit from having a great community to pull from.”