Five decades ago, Gary Schultz was a hard-working high school kid who liked motorcycles. He was in a program that gave students high school credits for working at part-time jobs.

“There was a plating shop here in Sterling that was hiring high school kids so you could get your credits, then on weekends, you could work full time. During the school week, you could only work four hours a day and you could work after school. I learned everything from there,” he said.

Schultz wanted to build himself a motorcycle so he first built a plating machine in his dad’s garage. He then took on some jobs for friends.

After high school, he went to work full time at Northwestern Steel and Wire as a laborer, and in the evenings he worked at his plating business. Eventually, when layoffs at the mill became a regular occurrence, Schultz turned to doing the plating business full time, hired two employees and moved into his current shop.

“We had so much work coming in and we moved into this building about 40 years ago,” he said.

Today, Quality Plating is a testament to Schultz’s hard work and dedication. The custom plating business, whose specialty is plating parts for motorcycles, cars, trucks and even boats and bicycles, has a steady stream of customers from around the world.

Schultz’s shop is one of the few remaining custom plating shops in the Midwest.

He has done custom plating on a motorcycle for NBA great Michael Jordan and, most recently, he did brass plating work on a custom coaster set that was sent by the customer to the White House as a gift to President Donald J. Trump.

But it’s the everyday customers and the relationships he’s built with them that keeps Schultz working at an age when most are thinking about retirement - or are already retired.

“I turn 70 this year and everybody says why don’t you retire? I think it’s the people and the stories and everybody who’s excited about the projects that they are working on. It’s just the normal guy off the street who’s restoring a car of their own that they have always wanted to do,” he said.

The process of plating hasn’t changed much, if any, since Schultz learned it 50 years ago.

“We take the metal, we clean it, polish it, buff it, get it all polished down and then it’s ready to go into the plating tanks, which are a series of copper, nickel and chrome and a bunch of different cleaners. Then it’s all finished,” he said.

Schultz’s hands are calloused and reflect the attention to detail that he and his shop are known for.

“The detail is what I have always concentrated on. It’s all just hands on. There’s no automatic machine. Everything is done by hand. You’re grinding metal and you’re sanding. There are times you can’t wear gloves, you have these little nuts, bolts and screws that you have to polish and clean or the plating won’t take to it. If it’s not perfectly clean, it’s not going to plate,” he said.

The other detail that requires attention is compliance with EPA regulations. That detail is the one that has kept Quality Plating in business.

“You have to work with the government because of the chemicals. A lot of those shops just started falling because they didn’t want to comply. One plater told me years ago, as long as you play the game and keep complying, you’ll be the only game in town,” Schultz said.

That plater was right. Schultz has customers around the world and regularly gets plating orders from Australia and other countries, as well as from throughout the U.S.

“Now I’m the only guy pretty much in the upper Midwest who does this. We have people calling from different states because the company they were dealing with is gone and now they want to start dealing with us. If it can go in a box or a crate and they can ship it, they can get it here,” Schultz said.

Schultz made the decision several years ago to down size and do all of the work himself. He runs the shop and wife Cindy runs the front office. The Schultzes have been married 43 years.

Cindy worked at Lawrence Brothers and then for several accountants and handles the bookwork for the office. Years ago, accountants told the Schultzes to incorporate and get bigger. They ignored that advice and kept doing what worked for them.

“Now, we can slow down a little bit and travel more and spend time with our kids and grandkids,” Cindy said.

Working for themselves also has allowed Gary to slow down - a little.

“I’ve cut back to eight hours a day and no weekends. I was usually here eight to 10 hours a day and then on Saturdays for years so we just cut that out. When I started, it was whatever it took to do it. I would leave the mill and go home and work full time. Sometimes I didn’t know what day it was,” he said.

Doing all the plating work himself means that projects might take longer but his customers don’t mind.

“Now that I went on my own, the projects that you could do in two months take longer but people are willing to wait. A lot of these projects are long-term projects anyway,” he said.

One major change for the business is the cost of materials. The plating process requires nickel, which is shipped from Finland, chromium bars and pure copper nuggets, as well as the chemicals that also are part of the process.

“Our buffing and polishing supplies, three months ago I ordered some and they went up 3 percent, three months before that they went up 3 percent, so that’s a 6 percent increase in six months,” he said.

That presents a challenge when bidding projects for customers, since the majority of the projects can be months between start and completion.

“With the prices of materials fluctuating, you bid a job and eight months down the road, they are coming to pick it up, and you bid the job eight months ago and a lot can change in that time,” he said.

But Schultz continues to abide by the motto that he started with all those years ago in his dad’s garage.

“It’s to keep good with customers, treat them fair, and have a good price,” he said.