Wayne Baumgartner (posthumous)
Founder
Industrial Recyclers Inc.
9400 N. 124th St., Milwaukee
Industry: Scrap metal recycling/ disposal
Revenue: $8 million
Employees: 24
Wayne Baumgartner, founder of Industrial Recyclers Inc. had a passion for metal since he was a teenager and started his own recycling business in high school after having been influenced by his father’s scrap metal yard growing up.
Baumgartner collected and recycled scrap metal and his business grew larger. He began providing a dumpster disposal service and moved his business into his parents’ house where his mother became the company’s dispatcher.
After years of recycling, Baumgartner built a scrap metal recycling facility and purchased eight trucks to increase his work force.
Baumgartner dedicated his life to the recycling industry for more 20 years. He grew his company from start-up to a firm that today has 24 employees and $8 million in annual revenue.
But then in May of 2010 Baumgartner, 40, died in a motorcycle accident. Then his mother died in June after a long battle with breast cancer. Suddenly, two members of the family that had been heavily involved in the family business were gone.
Baumgartner’s sister, Gail Tradewell, became the new president of the company after working as the office manager for seven years.
“My brother was extremely modest. No one would know he was successful or had any wealth just by looking at him,” said Tradewell. “He did not have one enemy and it seemed as if everything he touched would turn to gold.”
Tradewell said it was not easy taking a leadership position in such a male dominated industry but felt the need to keep Industrial Recyclers running the way Baumgartner intended.
