A late entrepreneur from north-central Iowa who’s credited with launching two businesses that became global powerhouses will be honored next week in the town of Garner.
Garner Mayor Tim Schmidt is proclaiming next Monday as “Francis Zrostlik Day.” The mayor says Zrostlik was a pioneer who was instrumental in the growth and development of that city and most of the surrounding towns in Hancock County.
Schmidt says, “He was just a tremendous human being, an entrepreneur, an engineer, a great business-minded person and just a friend to the Garner community.” In 1961, Zrostlik founded the Iowa Mold Tooling Company which initially retreaded tires and expanded into making tire service truck bodies. He also founded Stellar Industries in 1990, which makes a fleet of mechanic and service trucks, and was the first company in the U-S to make hydraulic hooklift loaders.
“Stellar Industries has over 800 employees now, not all in Garner, at some of their different facilities,” Schmidt says. “Francis Zrostlik started all this and we owe so much to him. Garner’s basically the tire truck capital of the world.” The mayor says Zrostlik’s birthday was August 14th.
He died in 2000 at age 65.
(By A. J. Taylor, KIOW, Forest City)