30 years for Mike's Specialty Welding

WALLACE — Mike’s Specialty Welding has defied the odds.  

Last month, the locally owned and operated industrial fabrication business celebrated its 30th anniversary with a community barbecue. Memories and laughs were shared over burgers and beers, but the anniversary also signaled an unofficial changing of the guard for the company.  

According to data from the Small Business Administration (SBA), just 67% of businesses started between 1994 and 2020 made it to their two-year anniversaries. That number continues to shrink as the years go on, but the final tracked metric is that only 25% of those businesses make it to 15 years.  

This makes Mike’s Specialty Welding exceptional, but Mike and Marcy Hayman could’ve told you that.  

MSW isn’t a traditional success story so much as it’s a perseverance story. It wasn’t the original plan, it definitely wasn’t easy, but nothing worthwhile ever really is.  

In the early '90s, Mike was working for the ASARCO Mining Company but when it shut down, he was faced with a difficult decision. He could leave his family behind and become a tramp miner, or he could weather the storm and look for work locally.  

“I was eight months pregnant with Cody,” Marcy recalled. “We decided to stay home and tough it out. He was working for Zanetti Brothers and he and Joe Zanetti started making snowmobile trailers for people in a vacant building that my parents owned at the time.”  

As their clientele grew, Mike saw an opportunity and decided to capitalize on it.  

“Mike hired a welder to help him while he continued working at Zanetti Brothers and that’s how we got started,” Marcy said. 

Over the years, the company has ebbed and flowed with the needs of the community, and admittedly there have been tough times, but they never wavered and now it appears MSW will be around for another 30 years.  

Mike and Marcy’s son, Cody, whose mere existence once played a deciding role in the direction of his family, is now taking over as the leader of MSW.  

After high school, Cody went to college to become a millwright, focusing on welding to help stay at the forefront of the field. While other opportunities could’ve lured him away, he found himself enjoying many of the same aspects of the business that his dad did.  

“I really took a liking to the customization and fabrication and seeing projects all the way through,” Cody said.  

In 2020, when things got weird for everyone, a surplus of work at MSW allowed the Haymans to take a leap of faith and purchase a CNC machine. A CNC, or Computer Numerical Control, machine is an automated tool used in manufacturing to cut, carve and shape metal, plastic, wood and other materials. This opened another door for MSW, one that allowed them to undertake and fill larger orders and expand their potential customer base.  

“They really speed up production and the efficiency,” Cody said. “Since we got the first one, it really changed the trajectory of the company.” 

The Silver Valley is synonymous with mining, and the CNC machines allowed MSW to begin producing mine consumable products that could be sold to the operating mines located just a few miles in either direction of the MSW shop.  

Cody isn’t taking over the business alone, he’s partnered with Matt Jurkovich to lead MSW in the future, while also turning a family-owned company into a legacy company. Cody’s wife, Brieanne, has come alongside as well, supporting her husband as they’ve stepped into a new chapter of their lives.  

“I’m very thankful for her, she’s been by my side the whole time,” Cody said. “I think she’s even taken a liking to it herself.”  

The future of MSW is secure, however, that same shop that Mike used to house his snowmobile trailer fabrication side hustle has been filled to capacity and Cody would like to see a bigger facility in their future.  

“Our favorite part of owning and operating has been the relationships we’ve garnered, employees, customers and vendors are all friends,” Mike said. “To have Cody take over our business is exactly what we always hoped for us and for him, a legacy of hard work and value to our community."