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Carol Shuttleworth Email
Owner . Shuttleworth
Huntington, IN
Locationc*************@shuttleworth.com
Primary EmailHow to contact Carol Shuttleworth
Join and see Carol's contact info for free!Current Roles
Employees:
129Revenue:
$45.5MAbout
For more than 40 years, we've helped our customers stay in line. Not to mention on track with their bottom line. "While Jim was still in college, he'd put one of his machines on a trailer hitched to the back of his car and travel across country making sales calls. He'd camp out in the evenings, hunting and fishing". . . recalls Carol Shuttleworth about the company's early years. "Jim's father, Charles, was a tomato grower and in 1938, started a canning operation," explains Carol, now president and CEO of the company. "Jim worked in his father's company from a very young age and when he was about 13, he and his father developed a piece of machinery called a Can Unscrambler. It allowed cans to be fed into it and then would spin them out one-by-one. Demand for the machine increased and, as a sideline to the family's canning business, regular production of the equipment began in 1952. "Jim was a born salesman and he was also very mechanically gifted," says Carol. This business did well enough to afford Jim the opportunity to attend Purdue University, but while only a freshman, he was afflicted with a very serious injury from a terrible tractor accident. "He was mangled in that accident," says Carol. "The doctors suggested that they needed to amputate his left arm, but Jim begged them not to, so they finally agreed not to do this. Shortly thereafter, his father suffered an aneurysm and was seriously ill. Jim was able to finish his mechanical engineering degree at Purdue, but whenhis father succumbed to yet another aneurysm and died, Jim was only about 22 years old. These events at such a young age made him a very serious young man" Who assumed major responsibilities. Although Jim had been awarded a full scholarship to Harvard for an MBA, his father's death changed his plans. "His father's widow had three small children, so Jim chose to come home and run the business for her and her children," says Carol. "Bill Gordon, who was the corporate attorney for his father's estate, helped Jim run the business and they built it up until it could be sold. When Jim was about 25, the company was sold to Hunt Foods, and with his savings, Jim bought the machinery part of the canning business for the sum of $5,000." Named the Shuttleworth Machinery Corporation, the company was moved to Huntington in 1962 and began production in a section of the old Salamonie Shoe Factory. "Three employees came with him from the canning business and they built the Can Unscramblers," says Carol. "Then Jim came up with the invention of a high-speed case packer, called the Shuttleworth Futurematic Case Packer, this hydraulic case packer placed bottles or cans into cases. By 1965, the company was licensing the case packers not only in the U.S., but also in Holland, England and Australia. By 1969, they were doing so well that Jim was able to build this plant" In its current location. As Jim Shuttleworth was building his business, Carol Longaker was establishing a career of her own. Originally from Pottstown Pennsylvania and armed with a degree in elementary education from Penn State University, she immediately went to work as a teacher in Monterey, California. "Like Jim, I was young when my dad died-I was only 16," says Carol. "His death impacted my life . I had to become independent very early. After graduation from college, my goal was to go to Europe to teach. The Army sent me to Croix Chapeau Army Base, near LaRochelle, France. I taught elementary school to the children of servicemen for 2-1/2 years." After President Charles De Gaulle ordered U.S. troops out of France in the mid-1960s, Carol accepted a teaching position at the Village School on Petit Avenue, in Fort Wayne. Soon, Lester Grille, then superintendent for Fort Wayne Community Schools, and Lloyd Way, director of special education, were observing her in the classroom. "Unbeknown to me, they wanted to start a classroom for children with minimal brain dysfunction but normal 'IQs', and mainstream them into a school with normal children," says Carol. "They thought I was the right person to start the first classroom, which was at Brentwood School. Later, I started the second classroom at Ward school and then I became the resource teacher at the Child Guidance Clinic for both FWCS and EACS. I had a private counseling practice at the children's division of the Fort Wayne Mental Health Clinic, and taught at the nursery school for emotionally disturbed children established at First Presbyterian Church." Carol met Jim Shuttleworth on a blind date. "Some mutual friends thought we'd be perfect for one another and they were very tenacious about it. The couple was married on August 7, 1970 and I became instant mother to Jim's three children - Tod, Troy and Trea. The following year, despite being told by doctors that she could bear no children, their son John was born-on December 13, 1971. "I was born on a Friday-the-thirteenth, Jim and I met on a Friday-the-thirteenth, and our son was born on the thirteenth, "says Carol. "Thirteen has always been a lucky number for us." With a young family and an eight-year-old business, Jim needed Carol's help. She gave notice, quit her job as a teacher and became a full-time mother and part-time business partner. "We entertained business clients in our home most of the time, then," says Carol, "because there wasn't much in Huntington in the way of restaurants. Jim talked to me about the business all the time and he involved me in decisions about the business almost immediately. I would think about ways to market and advertise the company. He used to say I did 'cookie cutter marketing' because I was usually in the kitchen baking when the ideas came to me. Then, when our son John started kindergarten, I started coming into the office regularly, so I've been working here, in some capacity, for more than 25 years." Their partnership was crucial to Carol's ability to take the helm after Jim died. "I was never just a partner in name only," she insists. "Jim never second-guessed me; he always empowered me. I think he relied on me, too, because with my help, he could concentrate more on the engineering side, which was his real interest. I focused more on the marketing side and the people side. We really complimented each other, so right from the beginning, we were total partners in almost every facet of our lives." `Their partnership, both as husband and wife and as business partners, is one that is greatly missed. "It was such a shock when Jim died," says Carol. "It's a challenge now, without him, but I have a lot of good people to work with-I think that's key," says Carol. "I'm a firm believer that you're only as good as the people around you and I've always been fortunate to have wonderful friends and employees. You have to have people around you that you trust, people that are loyal. I'm trying to fit my personality into what was so much his company and I'm trying to get others to accept that fact and embrace those changes. I think most people here were happy that I stepped into this role-they've been very supportive and cooperative through the transition. For the most part, they seem to understand that I cannot run the business the same way Jim did, that I have to do it my way. "When I stepped into this role, I didn't think I had to do it the way Jim did it; I knew I couldn't. I have a good understanding of the business because I've been around it for so long. I realize I'm not an engineer like Jim was, but I don't think I need to be-of 80-some employees, about 40 of them are engineers. I knew we had to make changes and use different approaches. I'm certainly not afraid of a challenge, and I'm also not afraid to make a mistake. That's important because I'm going to make them and, most of the time, we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. "A good friend of mine, who is a retired CEO of a large company, told me that he thought his greatest quality was that he wasn't hampered by thinking that he knew everything. He said that he could see that same quality in me, that I ask a lot of questions and don't have preconceived notions about how things are going to be. I took that as a very high compliment. It's a definite advantage not to feel you have to know it all. It's something that helps me-it gives me more peripheral vision and I'm more willing to try new things. I embrace change and welcome new challenges. I have always had some adventure in my soul. Obviously, that's a major part of Jim's legacy, too."Shuttleworth Address
10 Commercial RoadHuntington, IN
United States