Returning North

Growing a Career and a Family

Meet Ty Steinbrecher

I'm Ty Steinbrecher. I'm the customer experience manager at BOSS Snowplow.

I was born and raised down in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, about half an hour south of Green Bay. Go, Packers! After high school, I went to Michigan Tech in the U.P. in Houghton. Spent about three years there, trying to go to school and had a little more fun snowmobiling and doing other extracurriculars, which then returned me back to Manitowoc, where I started attending Lakeshore Technical College down in Cleveland, Wisconsin, for mechanical design and industrial welding.

The driver for Michigan Tech was my brother, actually. He went to school up there. He's three years older than me, so he was having a great time. It's a really good engineering school. I thought I wanted to be an engineer when I grew up.

Once I got my associate's in mechanical design, I went down to a little company in West Bend, Wisconsin, that specialized in point-of-purchase displays. We were working on things like the Behr paint chip display in Home Depot, the actual things that the paint samples went into. I worked a lot on, I think, at the time, it was the release of PlayStation 4. We did displays for Walmart, Best Buy, and GameStop. There were all different iterations for those stores. We would do all the contract design work, and then a different company would go and manufacture them.

I liked the work until–we got into the company we worked a lot for, Rapid Displays–which did a lot of stuff like American Greeting Cards and things like that, but also much bigger displays. One of their biggest customers was Sephora makeup. I got stuck making makeup displays. I know way too much about that stuff now than I ever cared to. It was great steady work for us, but I told my boss, if this tube lipstick was a spark plug, and it was the exact same display, I'd probably still be working for you, but I can't take this anymore.

After going to school at Tech for a few years, I always wanted to get back to the U.P. Didn't matter where. I just wanted to be somewhere north of the border. A friend of mine from Tech had posted a job looking for a CAD designer, and it was right in my wheelhouse. So put in my application, and I got an interview shortly thereafter. By the time August rolled around, I was able to land a job. I moved up here over 11 years ago now.

I remember my dad making a pros-and-cons sheet about moving. There weren't too many things on the cons list. He's like, you'll be further away from us. For now, I said, I know you guys are going to retire in northern Wisconsin at some point. They had always said, we're going to find a place on a lake, and that's where we're going to retire. Now they're in Land O'Lakes, and it's an hour and 45 minutes away.

It was a chance to get to the U.P., so I jumped at it. I had been up here snowmobiling a couple of times, and I've always just loved winter activities, whether it was country skiing or ice skating or snowmobiling or anything like that. So just more months of winter is always better for me.

Manitowoc, it's a town of 35,000 people, but it's still considered a small town. Iron Mountain-Kingsford has that same small-town atmosphere, but shrunk down even more. I kind of equate it to Houghton in the summertime when it's not full of students. It is just like a nice small community and everything. My first impression of it was a great area with plenty of stuff to do.

I've never been a city kid, so living down in West Bend is still 45 minutes from Milwaukee, but I just equated it with Milwaukee, and that was too much for me. I had to get further away. I like to be able to drive 10-15 minutes, be out in the middle of nowhere and go on an adventure.

Working at BOSS Snowplow

I started out in the truck plow division, and I was doing undercarriages for trucks and tractors to be able to attach plows to new models of vehicles. We do a lot of testing- impact testing, snow testing, things like that- seeing what would break and how to fix things, or how to improve products to reduce the downtime on snowplows. We always kind of joke, with Toro being our parent company, if a lawnmower breaks, grass can go another day. If a snowplow or a salter breaks, it has to be fixed immediately to make sure we reduce slip and fall; it's a lot more.

BOSS is a leader in the snow and ice removal industry. Big manufacturer. One of the biggest manufacturers of snowplows for trucks. That's our primary category. We also put plows on ATVs and side-by-sides, loaders, big, heavy equipment, things like that. We started out strictly with plows back in 1985. I want to say it was early 2000 when we started doing tailgate spreaders for spreading salt, and then that graduated up into bigger V-box spreaders that go in the back of pickup trucks and on flatbeds. We acquired a company back in 2019 to add a sidewalk line, so now we do standalone sidewalk vehicles, three different ones that are strictly for plowing, snow removal and de-icing on sidewalks. Most recently, we got into the liquid de-icing category, which is spraying brine onto surfaces to get rid of ice.

When I started out in engineering, part of my winter work was helping out the service department. We had three service techs taking upwards of 300 calls a day, and that was too much workload for them. They weren't able to keep up and provide a good customer experience. The engineers would take an hour a day and fill in as overflow. For example, if three calls coming in at once, when that fourth call came in, it would bounce to the engineering group. I learned the service side of things, like how to work on the plows, and I really enjoyed that hour of my day.

A service manager position opened up when the previous manager jumped into a sales role within the company, and I applied, got that, jumped right in, and then started growing the department from there. At that time, we had three guys, and now I'm up to five in that department, and one guy specializes in liquid de-icing. Between the six of us, I think we have over 150 years of service at BOSS.

The main function of my service team is to fix snowplows, but we're also educating customers on best install practices. We even get guys like, "What's the most efficient way to clear this lot.” We'll tell them because every single one of us has experience plowing ourselves. I mean, we live in the U.P.; we kind of have to.

Most recently, I jumped from being the tech service manager to customer experience manager. What that entails is still having the tech service department, but also gaining the customer service department. Two more guys who specialize in end-user phone calls and taking care of the sales aspect of things. Now we're really in the customer experience group where we're going start to finish. We're pre-sale to post-sale and take care of that customer in the life cycle of the product – start-to-finish type stuff.

Our customers, our end users, are buying plows directly from our distribution network. We have about 200 distributors, which then have a bunch of sub-dealers. Our main distributor network is so crucial to our business. We don't sell direct to customers in terms of our products.

My first week on the job was my first experience with the distributor meeting, and they threw me out in the parking lot here at BOSS and said, go talk to customers about plows. I knew nothing at that time. I said, the best thing I can do is tell you is this is a red snow plow, and that's it. We just wrapped up our distributor meeting a couple of weeks ago. Comparing the first one to the one we just wrapped up, and the relationships we've built along the way, some of the feedback we got from distributors at this last meeting was how much they noticed what a family we are as a company. I think we had 26 or 28 employees at the distributor meeting. How we all interacted with each other, and we put on the game face. We're super serious. We get the stuff done, but at the same time we can kick back and relax a little bit and understand how everybody works and just that relationship that we all have with each other and how we pass that on to the distributors and treat them like our own family.

I always find it neat when you think of how far BOSS spreads. We've got dealers across the nation; we've got dealers up in Alaska, we've got dealers in New Zealand, Japan, China, South Korea, all across Europe. A huge presence. It's always neat when you're driving down the road when you're coming back from Green Bay or something, you're just north of Green Bay, and you see a whole flatbed full of snowplows like, yeah… we're part of that.

BOSS is owned by The Toro Company. One of the biggest things when the Brule’s sold back in 2014, everybody was worried was Toro going to move and just pack up the ship and leave? It's been the furthest from that. I came on after the acquisition, so I can't speak much to both sides, but it's still very much a close-knit business, and we're very much family-oriented here. Everybody knows everybody. It's just a great group. You walk down the halls, and everybody says, hi and asks how your day is going and things like that. Same thing out on the floor. I mean, it's just a great, friendly group of people. We always talk about the Northwoods work ethic, too. People who work here want to be at work and build the best thing they can. That goes for all facets of the business.

BOSS is 100% in Iron Mountain. We’ve got all different kinds of jobs that you could be doing here. We get raw steel coming in one end of the building, then it goes into the machine area. Machine operators run lasers and press brakes to get the material ready for the next step. Going into welding, we have, well, I can't even tell you how many welders we got- dozens and dozens of welders that are doing a lot of manual welding. We got guys who run robotic welding cells. Once it moves from that area, it goes into paint. We have several people on the paint line, painting our specialty colors of black and red. Once those two colors are painted, then it goes to assembly, and we put everything together, and then it goes across the street – we call it The Boss Way – to our distribution center, where it gets loaded on a truck and pushed out.

It's neat seeing the history, too. I mean, what started as a patent up in the Copper Country, which M.J. Electric actually acquired, has spooled into what we have today. It's just crazy, somebody cut a straight blade in half and made a V-plow. And that's where we started.

BOSS in the Community

Since day one, BOSS has always been super involved in the community, whether sponsoring events or improving different sites around town. One of the things with Toro is the Land Water Thrive Initiative, which is basically maintaining and beautifying spaces around the area and making them accessible to as many people as possible. Its a lot of green space enhancements.

A couple of years ago, we did the Bay College Iron Mountain Campus walking trails. We did some fundraisers right at BOSS, with employees donating to the cause. We did different fundraisers where employees volunteered to raise money. Toro typically matches or doubles the donation, whatever we were able to raise, which is awesome. We provide volunteer hours to actually complete the project. We had probably 15-20 people over at Bay that day spreading mulch on the trails and building boardwalks.

We've done work with a couple of different parks in town. Stanton Street stands out, 25 Location. We did one over in Niagara. I can't even tell you the amount of equipment donations we've made to different nonprofits around town. I want to say it's up in the 70 or 80 range of pieces of equipment that we've donated, whether it's schools or parks, departments, or townships. I mean, anytime you see a Toro zero-turn running around at one of those organizations or municipalities, it's likely a BOSS donation.

Our downtown is a beautiful place with flowers everywhere. You'll see a Toro Workman with one of our VSI Sprayers in the back just to water plants. It's funny for us to see that application because it's like, man, I think that's a lot of stuff for watering plants. You see that thing all over downtown. You see it by Iron Mountain High School. You see it right in the main drag. You see it around the farmers market area. Downtown Norway has one too.

One of the other big events we host every year is the Special Olympics bowling tournament in October. That's always been just a huge part of BOSS. We get a ton of BOSS employees and their family members joining in on the fun. It's an extremely rewarding day. Just helping the athletes, whether it be from registration, helping them on the lanes, just cheering them on in general, handing out trophies at the end. It's a super fun day. The athletes absolutely love it, and smiles on your face the whole day long.

Living in the Dickinson Area

I moved up here as a single guy. One of the gals at work here at BOSS, introduced me to a friend of hers. I started hanging out with said friend and found my wife, Katie. It was about nine months after I started working here when we met each other and dated for a few years. We got engaged and got married at a church right here in town, and then had the reception over at the casino. We got married in January 2019, a nice winter wedding in the U.P. We built a house together and shortly thereafter had our first child, Natalie. We had our second daughter, Josie. We have two little girls that I'm chasing around.

We try to keep as much outside time as possible. Katie and I are both big outdoors people, big runners. We spend a lot of time running, pushing strollers all over the place. It started out with a single stroller for Nats, and then when Josie came along, we threw them in the double. Now Nats bikes alongside and Josie still hitches a ride in the stroller.

When I first met Katie, she was training for her fourth or fifth marathon. I remember joking with my dad, and he's like, she's going to turn you into a runner. You're going to run a marathon someday. I said, there is no way I will ever do that. I think within a year I was running my first 5K, and then that has spiraled up to Katie convincing me to do a Half Ironman with her. Once we did that, she goes, that's by far the hardest thing I've ever competed in or done. So I'm like, well, if you said that, that means we can do a marathon together. So I tried that, and it was way harder than the Half Ironman. I'll do the occasional half marathon every few years, but I'll stick to a 10K.

We recently got back into mountain biking. I did a little bit when I was at Michigan Tech, but we bought some bikes, and Natalie's been getting into it too. With the trail system and trail network around here, it's amazing how many places we have to ride, from easy stuff that a four-year-old can ride on all the way up to some of the best in the Midwest.

I came out of flat farm country in Wisconsin, and moving up here, you get lakes and rivers abound. You got terrain. Anything outdoors you would want to do, you can do up here. Winter sports are a big thing for us too. We love cross-country skiing. You can ski right at City Park in town. They have nice satellite trails you can ski right after work in the dark. We all know how short the winter day is up here. You don't get a lot of daylight, but the ability to go do something after work. It's pitch black at 4:30 at night, but you can still go out for a nice ski and enjoy that. So we take the whole family skiing. Natalie skis on her own now. When she was little, she used to ride in the backpack with me, just throw her on my back and go ski around. It's Josie's spot now.

We spend a lot of time out on Badwater all summer long, whether that's fishing, pontooning or water skiing. Any kind of fishing you want to do, it can be found around here. Katie grew up as part of the Badwater Ski-ters Water Ski Show team. They put on shows all summer long on Wednesdays and Sundays. It's an incredible group of kids. Well, kids and adults. We got local teachers still out there hitting the jump at 55 years old. So pretty incredible seeing that. But then you got second- and third-generation jumpers now, and it's a really neat atmosphere. It's a free thing for the community to see all summer long.

Northern Lights YMCA

I started out just being a member at the Y, going there to work out, especially in the wintertime. When I joined the Y, it was still the old center. The workout equipment was down in the old racquetball courts. The transformation since then has been huge. A brand new pool, new locker rooms, and they redid the entire fitness center area… basically modernizing everything. It's awesome. It evolved from just being a member to sending our kids to daycare there, which quickly evolved into somehow me being on the board of directors. It was actually a connection from BOSS that landed me there. One board member with a long-time connection to BOSS ended up stepping down. She couldn't commit the time to the board itself, so she reached out to see if there was anybody at BOSS that would be interested. I was one of them that got picked just for our involvement with the Y, with the girls being in daycare, Katie helps out with the swim team, and all the different events and everything that we like to support, so I ended up signing up for the board, and that's where I am now.

Little Sparks Childcare at the YMCA

Both girls have basically been going there since they were born. Natalie started when she was about a year and a half old. Josie's been there since she was an infant, so the girls are

growing up at the Y. Nat's had her first year of summer camp this summer. Absolutely loved that program. The things that they expose these kids to- they're taking field trips to the children's museum in town, going on walks to all the parks around, a lot of time at City Park, learning about stuff in the woods, and all the different things that they can do within a half-mile radius of the Y are just awesome. Natalie gets the bus to the Y after she gets done at Woodland every day and goes to aftercare there for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on how our days shake out. It's working out great.

Much like the community in general, is just that small-town feel. It's a small, close-knit group. I mean, we still have a rather large Y in terms of spots, especially in the U.P. We're in conjunction with the Northern Lights Y in Escanaba (Delta County). The Y in Iron Mountain is actually bigger in terms of membership, smaller footprint, but bigger membership. The opportunity it provides for anywhere from kids and swim lessons all the way up to senior-level classes to make sure seniors stay fit and are able to maintain a good quality of life. You also get teenagers in there working out, playing basketball, playing racquetball. You see all walks of life there, which is an awesome aspect.

In the wintertime, I try to get there in the morning sometimes before work. You'll get there with the 5:00 a.m. crew, and I'll roll in at 5:45. There's people done with their workouts already sitting around drinking a cup of coffee, still chit-chatting before they head to their respective locations after. It's neat to see the place is full from 5:00 a.m. till they close at 9:00 p.m.

The annual campaign is our big fundraiser event. The main function of that is to provide scholarship opportunities for anyone that needs it, whether that's a family with 3 or 4 kids or an elderly person that just can't afford to pay that general Y membership. They apply for those scholarship funds, and it's either partial or full scholarships that allow anybody in the community to have that opportunity to use the facility, whether it be for the workout equipment or the pool or the sauna or, or anything that the Y provides. They have full access to all that stuff. Members also have access to all the classes as part of the membership, such as yoga classes, Zumba classes, and spin class.

The Dickinson 100 Women Who Care have funded swim lessons for all area third graders. They bus kids in from all the area schools to learn how to swim. It's every school in Dickinson County, so you got kids from North Dickinson, Norway, Iron Mountain, and Kingsford.

Favorite Restaurants

Closest to the Dickinson area would be Chuckwagon. It's over in Wisconsin, but we'll still consider it the Dickinson area. A nice little friendly neighborhood place and great burgers. When we were building our house, that was kind of our go-to. Especially on Saturday night, to be working on a house from sunup to sundown and quickly run over for a burger at 8:00 or 9:00 at night. It was there. One of our favorite spots in town now; we typically go to church on Saturday night, and just a few blocks away from church, conveniently, is 51st State Brewery. Girls love the pizza, and we don't mind the beer, so it's a good spot to stop after church.

Places to Shop

With us being runners, Queen City has been a new favorite store. We used to have to go up to Marquette to their store or down to Green Bay. Having a place right in town now, we are frequent patrons now with the amount of miles we put on. We’re usually in there probably 3 or 4 times a year. If you want to talk about giving back to the community, they are another place that does that… They just had the Lake Antoine Classic a few weeks ago. For each race division, there was the 5K, the five-mile around the lake, and then the 15K, which goes through Fumee and then around the lake; for each one of those four different race lengths, Queen City donated a pair of shoes to someone random. They had all the entrants from that race and picked a name out of the bucket, and each one of those people got a pair of shoes. I think it was like up to $200. They got their Saturday morning group runs too, so that's another big thing. A lot of people from the community join that. Katie and I have joined that a few times.

Northside Meat Shop is one of my favorites. Nice and close to work. Joe's got a great selection of meat, plus specialty stuff only they make. It's a two-minute drive after work to go pick something up for dinner.

Sum up living here

One word would be community. Just with it being that small town, everybody knows everybody. Wherever you go, somebody is asking you how your day has been, how you're doing, how your family is, your kids, your parents, and they genuinely mean it. It's not something you find everywhere.

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About BOSS Snowplow

BOSS is a recognized leader in the snow and ice management industry, offering a growing lineup of plows for trucks, UTVs, and ATVs, salt and sand spreaders, box plows, sidewalk vehicles with a full range of attachments, and liquid deicing equipment designed for both commercial snow and ice removal professionals and homeowners. All BOSS products are built for ease of use, durability, and high performance, backed by a market-competitive warranty and uncompromising craftsmanship. Learn more

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About Northern Lights YMCA

Northern Lights YMCA is more than just a gym; it is a cause for Youth Development, Healthy Living, & Social Responsibility.