Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 13, 1995 TAG: 9504200020
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-18 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH COX SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE &WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was the early 1950s; she was in high school. During the summer, she would sell for her father, Arthur Meier, who had established Inland Products Company in 1930 after he relocated to Roanoke for another food broker, C.D. Kenny.
Now, 40 years later - after raising two children, after doing volunteer work through the Junior League of the Roanoke Valley, after helping to initiate the idea of Festival In The Park and after being an active member of the Christian Women's Club - she's back in the family business.
This time, the product weighs more than a small pack of Kool-Aid. The company she took over from her father 111/2 years ago deals mainly in bulk salt of all types: solar and brown bead pellets for water softening; chemicals and salt for de-icing; agricultural salt for animal salt-licks; and salt for food processing.
``We sell in bulk - 50 pounds, 80 pounds and 24 tons on pneumatic trucks,'' Justice said. The 50- and 80-pound bags, on pallets, come in trucks that unload about 45,000 pounds of salt at a time in her warehouse space.
Justice's main market is the Roanoke Valley, but she said she sells anywhere in Southwest Virginia. Last year, during the ice storms, she was fielding calls from up and down the East Coast.
``Everyone else hates the bad weather, except me. I had people calling me from Pennsylvania last year, salt became so scarce. I even sold them granulated salt, just like we would put on our table.''
Selling salt is a long way from volunteer work. It's also a long way from what Justice's father originally sold, which was ``everything from pickles to pecans,'' Justice said. When Meier started his business, he sold to large grocery chains such as Mick-or-Mack, as well as to food distributors such as Virginia Foods, whose clients were neighborhood grocers.
That's where the Kool-Aid connection comes in: Justice would call on the neighborhood stores, pique their interest in the powdered drink, and talk them into requesting Virginia Foods to carry it.
After taking over the business, though, she narrowed the focus from a variety of products to mainly salt, because she enjoys dealing in that commodity.
Through the years she has seen the business change not only its products, but also its location. When she was in college, it was on warehouse row, at the east end of the 100 block of Norfolk Avenue, near the First Street bridge in downtown Roanoke. On April 29, 1956, a fire burned down her father's building and a neighboring three-story structure, so they relocated to rented offices and warehouse space.
During the flood of November 1985, the offices and stock were in Pitzer Transfer & Storage Corp. buildings on Reserve Avenue. ``There was 5 feet, 2 inches of water in the office, and everything was destroyed. Anything I had in the warehouse was destroyed, too,'' she said, recalling her father's leather sofa and chairs.
After the flood, Justice moved the office space to an available room in a house she owned with another couple. ``A lot of my business is done over the phone with established customers. I take their orders and call Pitzer to release the salt, or deliver it for me,'' Justice said.
Justice said that her father didn't bow out of the business until he was 79 years old. He was a workaholic, whose business was his hobby, she said.
When he retired, she had already been doing part-time bookkeeping for his company. Her children were grown and lived in other Virginia cities, and she didn't want to see the business sold out of the family. ``I thought some day my children might get involved in it.''
Meanwhile, Justice has plans to increase her customer base. Her sales ability was rewarded in 1986 by Cargill Salt Company, who sent her on a trip for two to the Caribbean. She didn't bother taking any de-icing salt with her on that trip. Instead, she took her husband and two children.
Arthur G. Meier/Inland Products Co. can be reached by calling 345-7793 or writing P.O. 8066, Roanoke, Va. 2414-0066.
by CNB