“Smilin’” Jack Feeler was a pipeline welder who loved life. As a young man, he followed family tradition and traveled the country, welding and doing plant fabrication. Jack served in the military, started a family of five children, and continued his pipeline travels throughout the central United States.
In 1963, Jack opted for a job with roots. He and two partners started Three Way Constructors, Inc., which provided local pipeline construction, fabrication, and repairs. After two decades, Three Way had hundreds of employees and a successful book of business, but there was a problem. By 1987, Jack’s company, Three Way Constructors, found itself paying over a million dollars per year in workers’ compensation insurance and claims. Jack always wanted the best care for his injured workers and was empathetic to injury management because a welding rig had run over him just five years into his career, crushing a leg and puncturing a lung. Even so, Jack felt cheated by the many injury claims that seemed illegitimate. Jack turned to his youngest son, Larry, for advice.
Larry, a licensed physical therapist and private practice owner, and Jack devised a plan to conduct baseline medical testing for all of Three Way’s new-hires. From this screening, Jack and Larry were able to better match workers’ strengths with their jobs to create a safer workplace. In the first year of testing, injuries and costs per claim were reduced by over 60%, and Three Way saved three quarters of a million dollars. After similar successes in nearby oilfield businesses and towns, their functional employment testing quickly became a well known employer tool. By 1990, Larry and a partner incorporated software to effectively track employee data and also built a functioning, full work-simulation medical office. Their testing method was a breakthrough for the medical industry. In 1994, Larry formally incorporated WorkSTEPS, which is currently the largest functional employee testing company in the United States.
From the beginning, the original mission of WorkSTEPS was to address the rising incidence and cost of workers’ compensation claims. As the industry has evolved and the need for services has expanded, WorkSTEPS has evolved from the narrow focus of developing testing protocols and data for local and regional employers generally involved in heavy industry, to a more comprehensive provider of business services that utilizes its testing services and data in conjunction with a group of related and coordinated business services which are designed to help corporations nationwide contain and control costs related to employment and work related environments.
Today, hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers are safer, thanks to the influence and innovation of an oil field entrepreneur named Jack Feeler and his son, Larry.
