Hello and welcome to the Hammer Down website! The Hammer Down began as a monthly Trucking Department Newsletter for the Transportation Department of what was known back then as Better-Bilt Aluminum Products, Inc. The complete history of how the Hammer Down came into being and how it came to be here on the Internet can be found and read on our "History" page. This website, the Hammer Down name and domain name are NOT affiliated or associated with the current corporate owner of Better-Bilt Aluminum Products. This website is dedicated to the Drivers, Management, and fellow Better-Bilt Employee Alumni of the Hosea Magee/Cliff Logsdon era of this truly remarkable company.

As we look forward to 2009, I will renew and redouble my efforts to keep this website and information about our Better-Bilt Alumni Family updated and current. We lost several of our Better-Bilt family during 2008. We need to stay in better contact with each other and I plan to help in this area.

Click on the LINKS below to browse and visit our website. Please sign our Guest Book.

Our Alumni-Driver Breakfast held at Shoney's in Murfreesboro was another success. The pictures will be uploaded to the "Driver Happenings" page later this week. I wasn't able to get them all processed for the web pages this weekend like I thought I would be able to do. Bear with me....and thanks to all who come...we missed all who couldn't make it.... and thanks to Miss Kimberly and the Shoney's staff for making us feel so welcome.

Our first Better-Bilt Aluminum/Swan Drugs Alumni Driver Breakfast for 2009 was held on Saturday February 28, 2009. Photos can be found on the "Driver Happenings" page as soon as they can be processed. Thanks to all of the drivers and the one BRAVE LADY who attended!

2008 has started off with great sadness for us former drivers of the old Better-Bilt Aluminum Products Company.

We lost our retired Traffic Manager Cliff Logsdon, shown at left, to Lung Cancer on January 2, 2008. He was carried on his last run on January 5, 2008.

Cliff was one of the first drivers hired during Better-Bilt's first days. Having been an owner-operator and knowing how to keep trucking records for the D.O.T, he was made Traffic Manager of Better-Bilt's Traffic and Transportation Department. He also helped hire the first drivers at the Prescott Valley, AZ plant when it opened in the early 1980's. Cliff was 76 years old.

He will be sadly missed by all who knew and drove for him.

Rex Smeltzer, shown at right, was one of the first drivers hired at Better-Bilt Aluminum Products back in the 1970's. Known to drivers all across the country as "Toilet Paper", Rex lost his battle with Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease on January 30, 2008.

Toilet Paper was one of 4 drivers who stayed with Better-Bilt in 1995 when Caradon, PLC downsized the jobs of the drivers at both plants, turning over all dispatching duties and driver personnel to Leaseway Driver Services. He was one of the original company drivers still working for Better-Bilt when Metal Industries bought the company from Caradon, PLC and hired the lease drivers back to the company payroll.

Toilet Paper made his last run on Saturday February 2, 2008. See photos below.

Hammer Down, Cliff and Rex!

We will miss you both!

The Hammer Down "News and Information" page is being re-named "Driver Happenings" and will be dedicated to the Better-Bilt Alumni, Family, and Friend's get-togethers and "happenings".