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To some of his friends, Doug Schulte is known as “machine tool Google.” His encyclopedic knowledge of the specs and mechanics of machine tools comes from a lifetime spent in the industry. It all started with his dad, John, who joined machine tool manufacturer LeBlond in the early 1950s.

 I GUESS YOU COULD SAY I was born into this busi­ness. My dad started working for LeBlond around 1953, and after 32 years he went to work for a small company who was the LeBlond Makino distributor at the time, the R.O. Deaderick Company [now part of The Morris Group].

I REMEMBER GOING TO THE FACTORY with him where they had several different lathes on the floor. If I had a science project at school where I needed to make something, we would go to LeBlond and make it. The idea that you could cut metal was astounding to me.

I QUICKLY REALIZED that I’m not the manufacturing engineering type of guy. So I went to Cincinnati Technical College (now Cincinnati State), which had a program called Industrial Sales and Marketing.

 SINCE ‘88 I’VE BEEN WITH THE MORRIS GROUP. But I didn’t differentiate it. It always felt like I was working for Dad. And I continued to work for Dad until he retired in 2001.

IF I SELL SOMEONE SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS A SAW, and that saw was a good saw, when that person did get around to buying a lathe or a machining center, I was probably going to get the phone call. That was my thinking. I never want to turn a customer over to a competitor and say, “Go buy from them.”

I WAS EMBARRASSED EARLY ON IN MY SALES CAREER with a customer in Tennessee. An engineer asked me a question and my answer was incorrect. He called me on  it. After I left, I said to myself that I’m never going to let that happen again. Ever since, if I was promoting a machine to a customer, I would know every aspect of that machine forward and backward. I would know the specs better than the manufacturer.

MY DAD WOULD ALWAYS BE ASTOUNDED because I hate to read. I’ve got books on my bookshelf but there are very few of those books that I’ve read. But I’ll sit down with a machine tool manual and read it cover to cover.

 EARLY IN MY CAREER, Dad pointed out that I asked a lot of questions in the sales meetings. But I noticed the older sales guys would never do that. So I asked Dad why no else asked questions. He said, “Well, they don’t want to admit that they don’t know the answer.”

 IT’S A FANTASTIC INDUSTRY. If the country’s not manufacturing something, the country’s not surviving. And it’s a fun industry — the kind of things we do, the kind of things we make, the kind of parts you see, the people you deal with. I’ve developed friend­ships all over the world. There are (machine tool) builders that I don’t represent anymore that still wish me happy birthday every year. You’re tied to a very small industry that has so much impact on every­body’s lives. And most people don’t know it.