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Walter M. Stewart II, Damascus Corporation Founder, is featured in Coal People magazine.

"Just about everybody in a small business is pretty much an optimist, or they wouldn't have started it."

Walter M. Stewart II,
founder of Damascus Corporation

Walter M. Stewart II always liked anything with wheels--especially cars. Walter is a seasoned designer with love for his work, enthusiasm, and a genius for combining simplicity, robustness and dependability in mine-duty machinery and equipment. In 1980 he founded what would later become the Damascus Corporation.

His is a story of entrepreneurship and of finding and keeping a manufacturer's niche in the U.S. coal mining industry. Through thick and thin, Damascus Corporation today emerges a major builder of battery- and diesel-powered, rubber-tired transporters for the movement of personnel and supplies underground.

Now 53, Walter Stewart was born and grew up in Fairmont, West Virginia, where he graduated from East Fairmont High School. His eye and talent for art and automobile styling became apparent at an early age. He would later win the Fisher Body Craftsmanship Guild Award for automotive design for five consecutive years, beginning in the eighth grade.

Walter's inspired, advanced automobile styling entries in the General Motors-sponsored competition brought him three state and two national awards. His winning models are now displayed in his plant office, above his much-used drafting table and accessories. Because of his unique body-styling talent and creativity, he also won a Fisher scholarship for his four years of study at Fairmont State College.

After his junior year, his college days were interrupted by a 2-year stint in the U.S. Navy, where he served as a boatswain's mate on the destroyer USS Putnam. Following his discharge, Walter returned to Fairmont State and graduated in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in Industrial Arts.

Walter says, "My hobby is old cars. My dad had a lot of interest in cars and it rubbed off on me. He was a car dealer for 38 years and was the first used car trader in Fairmont.

"He started out with a gas station but soon tried to figure out ways to make extra money. He began buying used cars from new car dealers, who at that time did not promote the sale of used cars. He would fix them up and sell them. And that's how he got in the business," recalls Walter fondly.

"My father tried a lot of different things. Some of his ventures didn't work, and some of mine haven't either. In 1949, with his brother as a partner, my dad bought a Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth agency in Shinnston, West Virginia, near Clarksburg, and had that for ten years. But he still operated the gas station and used car lot.

"Among other things he also ran a pawn shop, Stewart Oil Company, a one-truck rural gas delivery business, and he invested in a housing development. But, mostly, he was a dealer and stuck with that," adds Walter.

An affable, down-to-earth and quiet man, Walter dresses modestly in his role of chief executive in a highly reputable and successful manufacturing company, and generally conveys the pleasing demeanor of a mature boy-next-door.

In 1961, young Walter Stewart holds one of his top award-winning car body styling design models.

Listening to him talk about his younger years and his father, now deceased, one can understand Walter's interest in vehicles, his willingness to pursue his own course, and his ability to recognize a coal mining need and the business opportunity it offered.

"Several large mines were located near Fairmont in the Northern coal fields, as were production and service operations of some large mining machinery companies like Joy and Galis. But through college I did auto body repair and mechanic work on cars in the basement of Dad's gas station-two at a time.

"I didn't know much about mining machinery until I graduated and went to a Job fair at the college. Galis had a recruiter there who showed me what they did, and it looked pretty interesting. So I applied for a job at several plants that made mining equipment and came up with a job at Industrial Contracting.

"They built rock dusters and, as a project engineer, I was assigned to that department. I learned a lot about rockdusting and steel fabrication. That was some great education," he thoughtfully recollects.

In 1971 Walter joined fast-growing S&S Corporation in Tazewell County, Virginia. From then until 1977, he designed a series of contemporary Sure-Flo rubber, rail and rubber/rail dusters and headed research and development activities for this new S&S product line.

He also conceived and designed the Rail Rover line of battery-powered rail personnel carriers and the Mine Rover-a three-wheel permissible personnel transporter-for S&S and there nurtured his ardent interest in moving people around safely underground.

Walter talks of these years as "good ones in which I really grew up. But he left to become secretary-treasurer of a start-up company called In-Pro, situated near the Virginia town of Tazewell. The business relocated to Damascus, Virginia, in 1978, a move destined to propel him toward the biggest enterprise of all: launching his own company.

"The world has to have coal. So it's going to be mined. High seams, low seams, big company or little company, they will all still need equipment."

The In-Pro venture was neither financially nor professionally satisfying. But without realizing it, he was becoming one of a small band of classical American mining machinery designers whose creations have advanced the art and safety of coal mining to the highest levels in the industry's history.

Walter says, "This was my wood stove period. I sold a lot of wood stoves. I put them in a pickup truck and sold them all the way from Baltimore through West Virginia-anywhere I could go."

Two years after In-Pro's move to Damascus, Walter decided it was time to go on his own. He established Damascus Pneumatics Corp. in an old bowling alley building on the edge of this small Southwest Virginia town. His first products were Auger Jet rockdusters and hand-held hydraulic coal drills, units requiring relatively modest inventory carrying costs.

The Damascus road was rocky, to say the least.

'Things were really slow in '82, and I would take about any job that paid a dollar. So when the opportunity came along, I took on the repair of garbage trucks for the town. The two old trucks were breaking down all the time, so I did some welding on them. Damascus Pneumatics was a one-man business at this point and, while crawling in the back of those stinking garbage trucks, I knew that things could only get better.

"During this time I also tried the used car business in Damascus, he mentions.

Growth was slow, but in 1985 Walter built the first of what would later become his bread and butter specialty: battery-powered, low profile, rubber-tired personnel transporters for underground coal mines. He quickly discounts the notion that luck had played much of a part in this business decision. Fascinated by "anything that had a wheel," Walter knew for many years that he would eventually design and build his own vehicles. It was just a matter of where and when.

Sevemtoes S & S Corporation sales literature, featuring new products by Walter Stewart, reflect the expansive scope of his creative design talent.

Damascus entered the market very inexpensively by rebuilding and modifying used golf carts for use in underground coal mines. Then, in the late 80's, the all new Mac-8 and Lil' Mac transporters were introduced. These pacesetting carriers of personnel and supplies were a hit with coal people from Pennsylvania to Alabama, and Walter was off and running.

Cuteness is not the hallmark of Walter's designs, despite his natural aptitude for ultramodern, avant-garde styling. Then and now, reliability and functionality drive his steady product development endeavors, and the company introduces several new advanced or improved models each year. He is currently working on two "new millennium" trans-porters-one diesel-powered, the other battery-powered.

He talks of employees' and customers' input in the new product design process. "They work on and use this equipment every day and see things that I don't. With any concept study or redesign, I always listen to their ideas and suggestions. And it really pays off. In response to the questions regarding who actually produces the working drawings and specifications for a new design, Walter replies, "I do. I would really rather do that than anything."

Growth of his company and demand for his products continued until the bowling alley building could no longer support sales. More production space was the obvious and only answer.

Good fortune came to the rescue, and a recently-built industrial building and a large tract of land became available east of Abingdon, Virginia, and between that town and Damascus. Through "creative financing," Walter acquired the property and moved his operations there in 1992. The plant has been expanded twice since them, and additional space is being added this year.

At 18, Walter was named West Virginia's finest car designer in the Fisher Craftsman's Guild competition sponsored by the Fisher Body Division of General Motors.

He vows emphatically that he is determined to mark the end of the Twentieth Century with the best diesel-and battery-powered transporters of people and supplies underground coal miners have ever owned. He's confident about the future of coal.

Walter says quite convincingly, "I am optimistic about the coal mining industry. I wouldn't be here if I were not. I believe just about everybody in a small business is pretty much an optimist, or they wouldn't have started it.

"We've done rather well over the last 15 years. I think the future looks good, especially after we pass this current slow period and complete our compliance with the latest diesel regulations for outby underground transporters."On the subject of diesel-powered Damascus transporters, he is quick to observe, "Our challenge is to meet all regulations and still keep the cost of our models down and economically affordable. Diesel machines are the greatest thing in the world for those mines where they can be used. With diesel power you can run in and out-just drive them. And our engines burn so cleanly that health hazards are no longer a necessary concern."

Back to coal, Walter says he firmly believes, "The world has to have coal. In this country, 56-percent of the electricity is produced from burning coal, so it's going to be mined. High seams, low seams, big company or little company, they will all still need equipment.

"I can see the number of miners, the number of mines, and the number of companies dropping, but even now they're producing more coal than they ever did. That still takes machines to transport people and supplies in and out, and it's not feasible for every mine to lay miles and miles of track. They need rubber-tired carriers, and that's our specialty, our niche."

His company's name was officially changed to Damascus Corporation in 1995. Visitors to Walter's office adjoining the plant will quickly note that it's always occupied by two - Walter and Maxine, a German Shepherd who instantly greets everyone entering despite a gentle admonition from Walter to refrain. Maxine dozes, overflowing a stuffed chair, close behind Walter's desk chair. "I've always had a dog at work. In 1980 I lost my Doberman. It was around Christmastime. I had been talking about getting another dog and that, when I did, it was going to be a German Shepherd. One evening about 5:30, I went up to the office and found It full of people-and a 6-week-old German Shepherd. All the employees had taken up a collection and bought this dog for me. They had pizza and everything, and we had a big Christmas party right there in the office.

"In the past, I always left my dog at the shop as a sort of guard dog. But Max was too young to be left there by herself, so I took her home. I put her in a box in the bathroom, wound an alarm clock and put it next to her so the ticking would keep her quiet, not noticing the alarm was on. When it went off at 3:00 a.m., poor Max started screaming. She ended up sleeping with my wife and me to calm down, and she's been home with me every night since (not in the same bed).

"She's a company dog and works a regular five-day week," he laughingly adds.

Walter and his wife, Kay, live in an attractive, contemporary home some 150 yards behind the plant. Kay is a nurse practitioner who teaches in the nursing program at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City and works at the Mountain City Extended Hours Clinic in Mountain City, Tennessee.

I've known Walter Stewart for almost 30 years and have watched him develop as a superb designer and fine businessman. And through it all he has remained basically unchanged.

Youthful-looking and pleasant, he is neither reclusive nor gregarious, somewhat shy, yet dignified. His words are often few but, when they are spoken, they carry the weight of good old common sense. In fact, he may be one of the least known founders and owners in the mining machinery manufacturing business.

With his vision and wealth of ability, this tall and lean man is determined to push the art of mine-duty machine design forward, and he will.

It would be naive to believe otherwise.