Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/180153
Built on an , immigrant s dream E dward Rudoy escaped the Bolsheviks and emigrated from the Ukraine in the 1920s, Mark begins as he shares the family's story. With an eighth-grade education he found work in Manitowoc, eventually welding submarines. In 1947, he took $12,000 of his own savings, borrowed $10,000 from his wife's family and convinced a bank in Chicago to lend him the balance needed to buy the Block Salvage Company in Oshkosh. The yard at the current Fond du Lac headquarters has been a site for metal recycling since the early 1900s, started by the Sadoff family. In 1964 Edward Rudoy bought the Sadoff 's family interest in the company and eventually brought the first automobile shredder to Wisconsin. Sheldon Lasky, who had been working as a stockbroker in Chicago, married Rudoy's daughter and, though he knew nothing about it and was not particularly interested in it, was offered a job at the scrap recycling company in 1972. "My father-in-law was very much like a lot of successful business owners in the Valley then," Sheldon says. "He was very top-down, authoritarian. It was typical of the industry; there were a lot of successful people that really worked hard and had a hard time with control. It was tough working for my father-in-law, but he was fair. He was honorable. We both shared the goal of wanting the business to succeed. On Friday we might not have spoken, but on Mondays, we always did." Mark is grateful for the mentoring he received from his father but also appreciates the legacy of his grandfather, who had begun to step away from the business in the 26 | Insight • O c t o b e r 2 013 Sadoff CEO Mark Lasky stands amidst a pile of 100-pound, shoebox-size briquettes of tin in the company's main facility in Fond du Lac. Everything that enters the yard is first checked for environmental hazards, then sorted by type of metal. Waste is removed and the metal pieces are then torched, shredded or sheared into sizes and shapes as requested by foundries, smelters or manufacturers. 1980s. Rudoy died in 2007 at age 96. "I've heard anecdotes and stories about my grandfather. He could be a very tough man, no doubt about that," Mark says. "But I had the best seat in the house. I was the eldest grandchild, so he thought I walked on water – and I thought he did. It was probably easier to be the grandson than the son or the son-in-law, which is the space my dad occupied." Rudoy, who believed in diversifying to counter swings in the commodities markets, through the years bought several small but unrelated companies. Block Iron & Supply Co. was composed of five operating companies, including a steel service center, a wholesale supplies contractor, an industrial fastener manufacturer and a company that was a distributor of architectural hardware, doors and frames, as well as a scrap metal recycling business. Mark had been with the company for about six years when he and his dad decided to divest of all the unrelated businesses owned by Sadoff & Rudoy Industries LLP. "It was just costing too much in terms of human and financial capital," Mark recalls. "It was distracting." As the third generation took the reins of the business, they became involved in the Institute for Family Business at Northwestern University as well as the Wisconsin Family Business Forum. Mark joined a TEC group (peer-to-peer w w w. i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m