Complaint Review: American Steel Structures

I was erecting two new steel buildings, a 35,000 sq ft barn and indoor riding arena and a 3,500 sq ft custom designed home. I contacted Perka Buildings of St. Joseph, Missouri to puchase them as I has seem their product before and liked their web truss design. I contracted Perka who said they were only the manufacturer and referred me to American Steel Structures (convieniently located in the same building), owned by Darrell R. McMahon to purchase the buildings.

A deal was struck for the buildings and I signed a contract where they were to deliver all materials in 60 days to the job site. At 60 days there were no materials on site. I had paid a foundation contractor a premium to work over the holidays to get it ready and a premiumn to the erector to work in the dead of Colorado winter to erect it. Now I had no material and a contarctor itching to get to work.

I flew back to the a*s (appropriately named) offices to review the plans with them as I had found several discrepancies that needed to be fixed. They agreeded they made mistakes on the door frame designes and agreed to change them and have the red iron on site in two weeks. The red iron was there in two weeks but no other materials (insulation, girts, perlins, skin, trin etc.) was there.

To my dismay they had made no changes to the door frames as agreed which basically made it impossible to put doors on the building (we're talking 12 ft wide by 16 ft high rollup doors and 16 ft wide by 16 ft high sliding door frames).

The next 9 months was a series of hundreds of calls (all documented) dozens of letters and faxes, letter from my attorneys, begging, pleading, screaming to get my material delivered. They had every excuse in the book for not getting my order there.

In the process I lost 2 general contractors and 3 erectors because they weren't going to hang around and wait for material and not get paid. Subsequently every contarctor I hired was at a higher and higher rate as the job became more piece part.

Bottom line is they took an extra 9 months to deliver my material. That 9 months of extra construction loan interest and contractor up charges due to bringing new erectors and contractors on board cost me an additional $142,000 that I would not have paid had they delivered all the material in 60 days as agreed.

I have successfully sued a*s in court and have a $142,000 judgement against them. If any one knows where they bankplease let me know as we are doing an asset search now.

They also have a number of liens against them by other customers and Darrell McMahon operates under 3 other company names; Amsteel, Best Central Inc. and D-Mac Investments. Al have liens filed against them in the state of Missouri.

To add insult to injury they referred me to a contractor to complete the job (see report on BNC Construction) that ruined my house and a*s feels they have absolutely no culpability there even though the contractor was an "approved" erector for their buildings.

Greg
Parker, Colorado
U.S.A.