Baier, Armstrong retire after long careers at Schildberg

Crews at Schildberg Construction Company turned out their last truck loads of material under the watchful eye of Tim Baier and Steve Armstrong recently as both men retired, finishing long careers with the company.

Baier spent nearly 36 years and Armstrong 46 with the company.

Baier most recently was sales manager and Armstrong was general superintendent.

Both men worked in harmony with each other for a long time, meeting weekly to discuss various accounts and the endless relationship between sales and production.

Under Armstrong’s careful watch, there were seven crushing and four stripping crews regularly operating. Their day-by-day production was ultimately his responsibility.

“I was just ready. I was ready to do what I want, to have freedom,” Armstrong said of the decision to call it quits.

Armstrong isn’t the first generation of his family to work at Schildberg Construction. His dad, Verle, worked there for 45 years, and the father-son duo’s careers overlapped. Others in his family have also worked for Schildbergs.

The younger Armstrong dug in first on a crushing crew, but he eventually moved up through the ranks. He was superintendent of the crushing crew, a position he held for about 15 years, before becoming general superintendent.

Because of his position, Armstrong not only worked with people within the company, but many customers. He retired in March, just after his 65th birthday, and said he’ll miss all those relationships the most.

“I worked with a lot of friends and a lot of landowners that I got along with really well,” Armstrong said.

Baier, 66, began in 1987 and calls Rex Hight was one of his most influential mentors, as he retired as sales manager at Schildberg. Baier moved up from aglime sales to where he finished.

He worked extensively with the Iowa DOT on projects such as bridges and roads, deciding what aggregates Schildberg could and couldn’t supply for those projects.

“I probably had my hand in every project in southwest Iowa, whether it was bridges, roads, counties, in some way,” Baier said. “It wasn’t that we could produce on all of those projects, but we’d give it a try and did a high percentage of them.”

Through his career, Baier worked a lot with the Iowa Limestone Producers Association. He was their president in 2021. Locally, he’s been involved with Greenfield Development Corporation, the Greenfield Lions Club, and several other groups.

Baier is a Hall of Fame high school wrestling official. Baier Auctioneering, the family business, has a fourth-generation auctioneer with his son, Kolby. Tim continues to regularly auctioneer.

Both men said that Schildberg Construction Company is a good company to work for. They employ over 200 people, are family-owned, and both men say they’re good to their workers.

“I’ll miss the people and the daily camaraderie,” Baier said. “We worked with a lot of good people and a lot of good employees throughout the years. The challenges of the job were by far outweighed by the good company and relationships that were built over the years.”