Traylor Chemical & Supply Company, an Orlando-based manufacturer and distributor of micronutrients and chelates for the fertilizer industry, has closed its doors and ceased operations after 56 years in business. Although company representatives could not be reached by Green Markets, industry contacts said the closure was the result of financial difficulties that included legal actions taken against Traylor in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Traylor’s website was no longer active, and telephone numbers to the Orlando headquarters and to wholesale outlets in Georgia, Indiana, and Texas were disconnected. A former Traylor employee said the company closed its doors in late September 2008, notifying employees only the day before that it was ceasing operations. “They called people on Thursday and told them Friday was their last day,” he told Green Markets.
The shuttered business represents a stark change of fortune for William “Bill” Traylor Jr., president of the company and son of its founder, W. Leroy Traylor. Just last summer, Bill Traylor, 71, was honored by the Florida Fertilizer & Agrichemical Association with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the Florida fertilizer and crop protection industry (GM Aug. 18, 2008, p. 10).
“They simply ran out of money,” the former employee said, adding that Traylor owed “multiple people” at the time of the closure. He said Traylor had not filed for bankruptcy protection, and some of the company’s creditors have been weighing legal options to limit their losses. Green Markets’s own survey of bankruptcy proceedings for Orlando and Atlanta showed no listings for Traylor Chemical & Supply dating back to the time of the closure.
According to filings with the Florida Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the Secretary of State office, Traylor Chemical’s major secured creditors include LSQ Funding Group LC, Orlando; Direct Capital Corp., Portsmouth, N.H.; U.S. Bancorp, Marshall, Minn.; and Sun Trust Bank South Florida NA, Lake Park, Fla.
Judgment liens against Traylor Chemical were also filed with the Florida Secretary of State in late 2008 by two businesses in Mexico who sued and won judgments against the company. The first, filed Nov. 21, is for $85,914 by Erachem Mexico S.A. DE C.V. Corp., Veracruz, Mexico, and the second was filed Dec. 31 for $55,903.41 by Fabrica de Sulfato el Aquila S.A. DE C.V., Jalisco, Mexico.
Traylor’s difficulties date back to at least 2007. In August 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor obtained a judgment and order requiring Traylor Chemical & Supply to restore $612,658 plus 6 percent annual interest to the company’s profit-sharing plan. The department’s lawsuit, filed simultaneously with the judgment in federal district court in Orlando, alleged that the company, William Traylor Jr., William E. Comer, and Frances Hale violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) when they executed 32 prohibited loans between the plan and Traylor Chemical. At the time of the improper loans, the defendants served as trustees of the plan as well as officers of the company. Comer was listed as the company’s chief financial officer, and Hale as its treasurer.
According to the complaint filed in the case, the defendants “caused or allowed” 32 loans to be made from the plan to the company between July 17, 1998, and Sept. 17, 2004, totaling $2,532,000. The suit also alleged that the defendants failed to take action to restore the full amount of outstanding loans owed to the plan, causing losses to the plan of at least $2,532,000 plus lost earnings, and that each defendant “failed to monitor and correct the improper actions of the other plan trustees.”
The judgment also included a payment schedule that required the company to provide to the DOL proof of monthly payments, ranging from $15,320.47 to $49,340.19, that started on May 1, 2007, and were to extend through June 1, 2009. The total of the 26 monthly payments is listed in the document as $661,579.35.
According to Gloria Della, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor, the legal process against Traylor is still ongoing. “They are still collecting on the judgment,” she told Green Markets. “We try very hard to get all our money back.” The DOL also has authority to assess a civil monetary penalty in cases involving violations of ERISA, but Della said Traylor has not at this point been assessed a fine in the case.
According to the DOL judgment, money restored to the plan was to be allocated to the accounts of all plan participants except the defendant trustees. At the time of the judgment in August 2007, the DOL said the plan had 33 participants. The former Traylor employee said the staff members hardest hit by the company’s financial undoing were long-term employees in Florida and Indiana who had been with Traylor for 20 years or more.
Traylor Chemical & Supply was described by the FFAA last year as “one of the nation’s leading manufacturers and distributors of micronutrients and chelates used in the fertilizer industry,” with operations in Georgia, Indiana, and Texas, and with international exports to Central and South America and Canada. FFAA said Bill Traylor’s “expertise in chemistry and micronutrients made him a key figure in negotiating a heavy metals regulation for Florida fertilizers.” Traylor was also chairman of FFAA’s board from 1995 to 1996.
In a business profile published by the Orlando Business Journal on Sept. 28, 2008, Bill Traylor said a major obstacle for his company was “being competitive with the rising prices of raw materials.” Asked what his worst business decision was, Traylor said, “I waited too long to get rid of the delivery truck fleet when gas prices started to rise. We were not getting paid enough to cover the cost of the trucks.”