1918 - 2018
Established in 1918 and founded by Charles Rysdon, Sioux Steel Company’s facilities were first located in a small horse barn with an adjacent wagon repair area. These buildings were next to an abandoned granite quarry across the Sioux River from the old Queen Bee Mill, above the Sioux Falls. Powered by electric motors, a single power shaft went down the entire length of the building to run machinery.
Sioux Steel’s first big break was in the building of McKennan Hospital (now Avera Health System), supplying all of the copper shingles for the facility. Sioux Steel also supplied most of the furnace duct work for homes and offices in the Sioux Falls area. A large percentage of sales were in a patented roof ventilator that are seen on the Sioux Steel rooftop and across other roofs in downtown Sioux Falls. In the late 1920’s, Sioux Steel soon began selling furnaces, wall and floor grids (registers), and oil storage tanks that required two new additions to the facility.
Expansion
In the 1930’s, Max Rysdon took over as President.
After the death of his father, Max led Sioux Steel to
push forward and expand into agriculture product lines
and new territories from the adjacent five states to as
far as Georgia and Alabama. In the early 50’s, Sioux Steel
sold grain bins to Australia and ultimately sold the manufacturing equipment design to that company. This allowed Sioux Steel to shift from an old grain bin style into a modern, corrugated-style for grain bins, allowing us to build larger diameter tanks.
Relationships
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, additional plant space was added to expand the operations with more receiving and warehouse areas.
A finance department called “Empire Credit” was started and Sioux Steel purchased Koyker Manufacturing.
Sioux Steel also sold commercial grain bins in the 1960’s (although they were smaller in size compared to today’s enormous tanks!)
New Products
In the late 80’s, Phil Rysdon’s son, Scott, was 18 when he began his career in the tank department.
Galvanized stock tanks started being manufactured differently with polyethylene material. New line of hog and lick feeders were started utilizing this same process.
Scott Rysdon continued the growth of Sioux Steel into new markets and product lines such as oilfield containment and other new livestock products.
Old Is New
Continually expanding products with the development of large commercial grain bins, grain bagging systems, paddle sweeps and Pro•Tec engineered fabric buildings.
For over 100 years, Sioux Steel has provided jobs and been an active contributing member of Sioux Falls and its surrounding communities here and abroad. Sioux Steel believes in giving back to the people and communities that have helped make the company such a great success.
