Sauer System (CONT’D FROM PAGE 1)
for the company’s early success. His two friends/partners put up capital but did not contribute to the day-to-day “grind” of the growing venture, an arrangement Lou Sr. grew tired of after three years. So, he dissolved the partnership, paid one partner his
According to the archival records and the history of the company compiled in a pocket-sized book researched and written by Tish Allan, the granddaughter of L.E. “Lou”
From left, framed photos of L.E. Sauer Sr., L.E. Sauer, Jr., and Robert Sauer sat on a table in a room with other archival material for guests to admire and remember.
Sauer Jr., in the early 1900s, Louis Edward Sauer, Sr. left Louisville for St. Louis in search of work. He found it by starting a business with two friends from the Centenary Methodist Church and named it Centenary Manufacturing Company, where he was a machinist and performed all the
share in cash and with the other, flipped a coin to deter- mine which of the two would win his share in cash or in the machinery upon which the business was built. Lou Sr. won the coin flip and the machinery, and thus, L.E. Sauer Machine Company was born in 1926. Humble Beginnings Lou Sr.’s business started as general machine shop and manufactured metal parts and tooling for a wide range of industries. As the business grew, his two sons, Louis Jr. and Robert, joined the company and by the late 1920s, the small family business was producing its first parts for the relatively new corrugated industry. Like other compa- nies at the time, the Sauers struggled—and survived—the Great Depression and became heavily involved in the W.W.II effort in 1940, after which it thrived by providing parts to large manufacturing companies, as well as more corrugated plants, which were opening more frequently. Lou Sr. died in 1952 and his two sons assumed control of the company. A local corrugated company asked the Sauer brothers if they could manufacture a die that could cut a perforated circle in a box as it was run through a die cutter, so Lou Jr. invented a way to make it possible, which led to the company’s pioneering of rotary die cutting sys- tems for printer-slotters, including the use of polyurethane anvils in die cutting and thus, the Sauer System was born. (The company still holds 15 patents on its processes and products.) Significant Growth Expansion came rapidly but so did challenges, specifi- cally, on how to ensure the company’s supply of polyure- thane for its anvils and scorers, which it did by forming another company, Dynasauer Corp. In addition, the Sauer
other tasks required of a new business owner, including purchasing machinery, bidding jobs, overseeing produc- tion and hiring employees. Lou Sr. was largely responsible A pocket-sized book on the history of Sauer System was writ- ten and assembled by Tisha Allen, the granddaughter of Lou Sauer, Jr. Every one of the 375 guests who attended the cele- bration event was gifted a copy.
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18 June 1, 2026
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