Notes from the Road – New Book Chronicles the Rise and Fall of the American Manufacturer

Notes from the Road

John Menzel

MARION, MA, UNITED STATES, September 1, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In Notes from the Road: Lessons Learned from Turning around and Building a Manufacturing Business, John Menzel gathers fifteen years of newsletters that once circulated among the employees of his Fiberglass Industries. What began as monthly updates for workers — financial notes, sales reports, personal acknowledgments — became a story of a mid-sized American manufacturer through booms, busts, and global competition.

The book recounts how Menzel and his partner, Charlie Barber, purchased a bankrupt fiberglass plant and turned it into a $30 million enterprise, only to watch it erode under pressure from subsidized imports and unforgiving markets. But this is not a rant.

In fact, Menzel writes candidly about the pride of his workforce, the eternal woes of management, and leadership lessons that emerged from the grind of production and the strain of keeping jobs alive.

With degrees in engineering, law, and business, and a career that began at Goldman Sachs, Menzel walked away from Wall Street in the 1970s to become a hands-on manufacturer.

Over the next four decades, he acquired and managed companies in aerospace and composites, including A&M Engineered Composites and Specialty Materials, before devoting thirty years to Fiberglass Industries. That long road of growth, turnarounds, and eventual liquidation has all the ingredients to make this book a modern business classic.

“Looking back,” Menzel writes, “I could see it coming, but not the magnitude, the destruction of American manufacturing, and our government’s complicity in encouraging it.”

Notes from the Road is for entrepreneurs, managers, and business students who want to understand not just how companies rise and fall, but how to recognize the warning signs, avoid the traps, and build something that lasts.

Book Details

Title: Notes from the Road: Lessons Learned from Turning around and Building a Manufacturing Business

Author: John Menzel

Publisher: AMZ Pro Publisher

Genre: Business / Memoir

Language: English

Availability: Pre-order now on Amazon (paperback, hardcover, and Kindle)

Discover the lessons of leadership, loyalty, and resilience of the American manufacturer

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John Menzel
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