A century in business: Hughes Brothers hits 100th year

Company recognized as Nebraska Manufacturer of the Year

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The Hughes family had a rough year in 1918. Brothers John, Harley, Ben and Ted had just experienced the death of their father. World War I was raging, the economy was in shambles, and their inherited housebuilding business wasn’t paying the bills.

“They had a mountain of debt and a lot of wood, but nobody was building any houses. It was a recession,” said John L. Hughes, Ted’s grandson and the current president of Hughes Brothers, Inc. in Seward.

The young brothers ranged in age from 17 to 25 at the time. Little did they know, they were about to weather another storm together.

“There was an ice storm that knocked down power lines near Goehner in late October of 1921,” Hughes said. “That storm came through and turned everything around.”

Electrical power was fairly new back then, and the Blue River Power Company had only been serving Seward for a short time when the storm devastated the community and destroyed its electrical system.

Burdette Boyes, owner of the power company and a friend of one of the Hughes brothers, reached out to the family for help getting the power lines back up.

The brothers decided they could use their inventory of housing materials to make cross arms for power structures to help Boyes restore electricity to the community.

As the years went on and the economy improved, the brothers continued building houses but also kept making electrical supplies. Eventually, the electrical side of the business outweighed the housing jobs, and the four brothers never looked back.

100 years later

Today, Hughes Brothers Inc. manufactures more than 900,000 custom steel, wood and fiberglass products for the electrical utility industry – everything that goes into an electrical transmission structure except the wires, insulators and poles.

Hughes Brothers commemorated its 100th year in 2021 with an open house on Oct. 15. The event included guided tours of the plant given by longtime employees. Nearly 1,000 people attended.

Earlier that week, the company was recognized as the small-sized Manufacturer of the Year by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce at a ceremony in La Vista, with Gov. Pete Ricketts presenting the award.

The award honors Nebraska manufacturers that implement innovative ways to conduct business.

“Nebraska manufacturers have been answering the call to solve America’s toughest challenges for decades,” Nebraska Chamber President Bryan Slone said. “We’re so proud to have these companies operating and expanding in our communities.”

Hughes Brothers employs 275 employees – including one in Oregon, who handles lumber acquisition.

The company sits on a 42-acre campus on the west side of Seward, just east of the fairgrounds. Its production plant, offices and warehouses total half a million square feet of indoor space.

Three generations in business

John Hughes became president of the company in 1995, after spending his summers and time after school working different jobs in different departments.

“My first job here was Blueprint Boy,” Hughes said.

He created the drawings needed for parts to fill customers’ orders – hundreds of thousands of drawings for different parts and pieces of hardware.

“Some were for steel, some fiberglass, some wood. It was really a fun way to see what all was being made,” he said.

He spent a couple summers working in sales and one year as the company’s computer network manager. After graduating college in 1992, he worked up to secretary/treasurer and ran the wood department.

In 1995, his father, Ted R. Hughes II, stepped away from the business. He gifted his two-thirds of the company in equal parts to John and his brother, Ted R. Hughes III, with their cousin, Timothy Hughes, owning the other third.

They continued to grow the company, and John still oversees the wood department.

“You have to have one foot on the ground. It’s good for me to remember how things are made,” Hughes said.

A home for artifacts

In 2017, Hughes Brothers sold its fiberglass pultrusion division to Owens Corning, and the sale sent four employees to the new company to oversee the transition.

That left four offices empty inside the Hughes Brothers building. Not wanting that space to become a dumping ground for old copiers and broken junk, Hughes decided to put the office space to different use.

“We have all these artifacts over 100 years. We have this awesome story to tell. Why don’t we just make a museum?” he thought.

He connected with Doug Hartman of Hartman Historical Services – the same person who contributed a large effort to the Nebraska National Guard Museum just up the hill from Hughes Brothers – and the company’s museum became a reality.

The museum features the 100-year history of the company through photographs, a family tree, displays of the production process and miniature replicas of its most popular products. It also highlights the company’s philanthropic contributions over the years and its involvement in World War II, making ammunition boxes and other military supplies.

The museum is open to the public from 12:30 to 3 p.m. the first Friday of every month. Larger groups may call (402) 641-2991 for an appointment.

A niche market

Hughes Brothers is one of just a handful of companies in the U.S. that manufacture components for the utility industry. Its competitors in wood production are on the coasts, in Canada and in Louisiana. Missouri and Illinois are home to larger steel production facilities, and fiberglass companies are scattered throughout the Midwest and Southeast.

“The market is not that big. There are 153 power companies in the U.S.,” Hughes said.

Nebraska is the only state that operates solely on a publicly owned power system. Every other state has at least one investor-owned operation.

Only about 3% of Hughes Brothers’ business is Nebraska-based. It does most of its business in more heavily populated areas like Texas, St. Louis and New England. Its west coast sales are increasing, too. About 2% of sales are international, mostly to Canada and South America.

Hughes said the large size of some of the company’s products makes it difficult to ship them long distances.

He said having a skilled labor force and people with a “Midwest work ethic” have helped the company thrive.

Protecting the city

The March flooding of 2019 showed Seward residents just how high the water can get in a community surrounded by waterways. The Big Blue River, Lincoln Creek and Plum Creek all contributed to the near-historic water level.

The recent floods weren’t the first, though. In March of 1948 and 1949, abundant snowfall led to water levels four feet high inside Hughes Brothers and nearby homes.

Not wanting to move the plant they had worked so hard to build, the four brothers decided a barrier was needed between the water and the community.

“The brothers went to the Army Corps of Engineers, who said, ‘No, you don’t need a dike. You’re fine,” Hughes said.

The brothers built one anyway. They already owned much of the property near the Big Blue River on the west side of town. They acquired a few more pieces of land and, from 1950 to 1953, piled dirt to build the dike that now runs along the pond, behind the swimming pool and behind Pac ‘N’ Save.

A lawsuit filed over the project was thrown out, and the Army Corps of Engineers stepped in to finish the southern portion of the dike near Tenneco.

The dike has saved the city of Seward from major floodwaters several times since the 1950s.

“We've done a lot for the community, but nothing bigger than that project,” Hughes said.