Nucor became the largest steelmaker in the United States by melting scrap in electric arc minimills instead of running blast furnaces, and by paying weekly production bonuses that can more than double base pay. Ken Iverson turned the Nuclear Corporation of America's Vulcraft joist business toward steelmaking in 1969, kept four management layers and no assigned parking, and committed to thin-slab casting at Crawfordsville in 1989 ahead of every integrated producer. Investors read Nucor as a cyclical commodity producer that stayed profitable through downturns because its labour cost falls with output and it never resorted to layoffs. Richard Preston reported the Crawfordsville project as it happened, and Iverson set out the management system in his own short book.
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