For more than a century, the Phillips family name has been synonymous with grit, ingenuity and service in the Long Beach industrial community.
What began in 1915, when Russian immigrant Paul Phillips traded a butcher’s apron for a wagon and a small warehouse on what is now Long Beach Boulevard, grew into Phillips Steel, a company that helped shape the city’s industrial backbone for four generations.
Paul saw opportunity where others saw castoffs. In the early days, his “scrap” business recycled fat, paper, metals and rags before expanding into the port’s industrial corridor. When he realized that the manufacturers selling him scrap were buying raw steel from somewhere else, he saw the future: full-service metal supply. The company’s move to West Anaheim Street in the 1930s marked the beginning of a decades-long evolution—one fueled by listening to customers, investing in new technologies and treating employees like family.
By the time brothers Greg and Todd Phillips came on board, the business had grown from a modest scrap operation to a 100,000-square-foot industrial hub serving refineries, chemical plants, energy companies and entrepreneurs across Southern California. The Phillips philosophy—take care of people, commit for the long term and never stop improving—was woven into every generation and helped the company weather the Great Depression, recessions, supply chain shifts and industry change.
Greg and Todd were raised in that lineage. They learned from their grandfather, father and uncle not just how to run a steel operation, but how to show up for a community, build trust and combine hard work with heart. Those values shaped them as leaders and, ultimately, as founders. Seven and a half years ago, Greg and Todd took everything their family built and poured it into something new that reflected their own values and vision: Tonnage Industrial.
Tonnage was founded not as a break from their history, but as a natural continuation of it. The same spirit that drove a young immigrant to start a scrap business with a wagon is the spirit behind Tonnage today—adaptable and customer focused with the belief that relationships are the strongest foundation any industrial company can have.
When Phillips Steel transitioned to an online, material distribution only model in 2025 after more than 100 years, it marked the end of an era, but not the end of the Phillips legacy. Greg and Todd are proud to carry forward the business at the scale of what their family started: serving the region’s industrial companies with honesty, speed and craftsmanship, and staying deeply connected to the Long Beach community that has been home to the Phillips family for more than a century.