Wow, that was good. The video is great. You watch it and you realize all the things we're doing and well, this isn't all the things we're doing. This is just snapshot of some of the things we're doing at Fastenal. My name is Will Overton and I'm here to introduce Mr.
Mark Dunkey or Pastor Mark Dunkey from the Faith Lutheran Church to give the invocation this morning. Mark?
Thank you, Will. Sunday afternoon after a day of worship and dinner with friends,
I was able to spend
a little time outdoors and paid attention to the everyday wonders in creation. The bulb presses its stem up the soil, the buzz of a honeybee in search of nectar, gentle rain and warm sunshine. The creators' everyday wonders combine in the glories of springtime growth and here too, everyday wonders are here. A warm greeting of customer and co worker pride in your work and extra effort, a simple idea that takes that adds value. Everyday wonders here that combine the glories of intercompany stock shelves and on time deliveries.
Please join me in offering a prayer of gratitude for everyday wonders. Creator God, we raise up to you the everyday wonders of the everyday people in every position who comprise this unique corporation, inspire and guide the work of our hands and our minds, lead us into a flourishing future as we gather to review our accomplishments and plans for the future, bless the work of our assembly and this corporation. May our shared purpose bring blessings to our customers, coworkers, and our community.
Amen.
Thank you, Pastor Demke. This annual meeting of the shareholders of Fastenal is now convened. I am Willard D. Oberton, Chairman of the Board of the company, and I will act as Chair of this meeting. Mr.
John Millich, who is Vice President and General Counsel of the company, will act as Secretary of this meeting. We're going to make a few recognize a few people. But before I do that, I want to make just a couple of comments on the year. Pretty simple, 2018 was a very, very good year for Fastenal. I want to thank Dan and his entire team of 21,000 people for what they've been able to accomplish.
It's amazing everything that we have going on, the success, and I'm just really proud of them. And as shareholders, I hope that you feel as proud of this group. And when you see them, if you're out traveling somewhere, stop into a store and say, hey, thanks what you've done for me. I just had an opportunity a minute ago, a gentleman walked up to me and he said, I just want to thank you. And I said, what for?
He said, My Fastenal account that I put $40,000 in several years ago just turned over $1,000,000 just about 2 weeks ago. And
I
said, well, when did you invest the $40,000 And he said, oh, it was in the late '80s or '90s. And I thought, geez, I said, I thought you would have had more than $1,000,000 He goes, well, my investment advisor asked me or suggested that I diversify several years ago. So I sold half of it and bought a new car. Would have much more had I hung on to it. True story.
So a good year followed by another great quarter. And so we're really looking forward to a great 2019. Couple of comments before I introduce the Board of Directors or excuse me, before I introduce the founders. A few facts about Fastenal. I looked this up because last week, the company announced that we're going to do a stock split.
So you start looking at it and see what have we done. Well, if you go back to 1987, the original Fastenal share one share of Fastenal sold for $9 That share today, before we do the stock split in a few weeks, is now worth 96 shares. So because of the splits we've done, one share of Fastenal is now 96 shares of Fastenal. You take the 96 shares of Fastenal times this morning's price of just over $70 and that share is worth $6,730 as of today, 32 years later. So pretty decent return.
That doesn't take into account the fact that we've been paying dividends out, and I do not have the exact number on the dividend. But if you take last year's dividend of $1.60 per share and then you multiply that times 92, it says that the dividend in 2018 on one share of Fastenal's original fair share of Fastenal stock is $154 So if I had invested $9 and hung on to it, I'd be collecting $154 in 2018. You think about that, that's just the dividend. I still own the $6,000 share $6,700 share. So it's really impressive.
The other reason I'm excited about it besides the stock split that we announced is that we hit a milestone last week and it happened to be on my birthday, so it was like a great birthday present. When the stock hit $70 it also coincided with a $20,000,000,000 market cap. So the value of all the Fastenal shares together last week for the first time exceeded $20,000,000,000 And one of the reasons I'm telling you this is I want you to understand what this group of people, the founders, who I'm going to introduce in a minute, what they've done, what they've built. And now there's a lot of work. There's 20,000 plus people working every day to keep it going and make it even better.
But this group is responsible for starting this and keeping it going and pushing us. And sometimes they patted us on the back, sometimes they put us in a headlock and we deserve probably both. But it's been fun and I'm very, very proud to be a part of this organization. And with that, I'd like to recognize our founders. I believe there are 3 I know there are at least 3 of them here today.
I'm not sure if there are any more. And as I read your name, if you would please stand, I would appreciate it. Robert A. Kirlin, Henry K. McKonnan, Let's see, there's Robert A.
Kerlin. Henry K. McKonnan was not able to join us. John D. Remick, I know I saw Jack here today.
They're all sitting together. This is easy. Steven M. Sloggy did not make it and Michael M. Gostomski.
When I think of these 5, many, many positive things you can think. But I think it kind of comes back to what Fastenal decided about probably 10 or 15 years ago about our cultural values. Our cultural values are ambition, innovation, integrity and teamwork. And when you think about those that and you think about the people that founded the company, it's spot on. The one that I would add for this group, this group of individuals is very, very generous.
They do so much for so many people. And for that, that's one of the reasons I feel so good about being a part of the Fastenal company is because what our founders and our people do for others, not just for themselves. Thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Next, I'd like to recognize the Fastenal Board of Directors.
When I read your name, if you'd please stand, I'd appreciate it. Michael J. Anzius, Michael J. Dolan, Stephen L. Eastman, Daniel L.
Flores, Rita J. Heisey, Darren R. Jackson, Daniel L. Johnson, Scott A. Satterlee and Renee K.
Weiskopf. Our Board of Directors works very, very hard to help Dan and his team and just keep an eye on your investment and I thank them for everything they do. They work hard on it every day. I will now ask Mr. Milek to report on the number of shares present at this meeting and to conduct the voting on the proposals to be considered at this meeting.
Following the vote, our Chief Executive Officer and President, Daniel L. Flores, together with other individuals from our organization will report to you on the company. Mr. Millich?
Thank you, Will. Good morning, everyone. Before starting, I want to remind shareholders of the rules of this meeting, copies of our work which are available at the registration table. Most importantly, if you wish to speak, please approach the microphone here at the front either at the left or the right. Upon being recognized, please state your name clearly and limit your statements to no more than 3 minutes.
There are 3 management proposals and one shareholder proposal to be voted upon today. A designee for the co sponsors of the shareholder proponent is in attendance and he will have 3 minutes to introduce the proposal and make a statement in support. Management's position is already stated in the proxy statement that you have received. The record date for the determination of the holders of the company's common stock entitled to receive notice of and vote at this meeting was fixed by our Board of Directors February 22, 2019. I present to this meeting a certified list of the holders of the shares of the company's common companies issued and outstanding common stock as of the close of business on the record date.
This list will be kept open and subject to inspected by any shareholder during this meeting. I also present to this meeting an affidavit of a manager of Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc attesting that the notice of the meeting together with a proxy statement, a proxy card and certain other documents were mailed on or about March 12, 2019 to each holder of record of the company's common stock as of the close of business on the record date. The affidavit of mailing of the notice of this meeting will be attached to the minutes of this meeting as Exhibit A. The certified list of holders of the company's common stock will be filed with the books and records of the company. As of the close of business on the record date, there were 286,000,000,158,262 shares of common stock.
Each share of common stock is entitled to one vote. For a quorum to be present, a majority of the 286,000,158,000 262 votes entitled to be cast must be present in person or by proxy at this meeting. On our preliminary count, they're represented at this meeting either in person or by proxy a majority of the votes entitled to be cast at this meeting. Therefore, a quorum is present for the transaction of business today. Is there anyone present who has not submitted a proxy or registration form?
A record of the proxy submitted to this meeting and the ballots of the individuals appointed as proxies and of the shareholders voting in person at this meeting will be filed with the books and records of the company. Jan De Gallier has been appointed to act as the Inspector of Election with respect to all matters to be voted upon at this meeting or any adjournment thereof. The oath of the Inspector of Election, what has been administered and will be attached in the minutes of this meeting as Exhibit B. We hereby make available to the Inspector of Election the list of shareholders, the registration forms and the record of all proxies submitted to this meeting. Copies of the minutes of the last annual meeting that the company held on April 24, 2018 are available over at the registration desk.
We will therefore dispense with the reading of the minutes of that meeting. All shareholders of record as of the close of business on February 22, 2019 may vote on the matters considered today. If you wish to vote by ballot, please raise your hand when I ask you to do so and a ballot will be given to you. Shareholders who have appointed others as proxies to vote their shares whether in writing or by telephone or over the Internet and they have not terminated their proxies should not vote by ballot. We will distribute 1 ballot covering all matters to be voted upon at this meeting rather than separate ballots for each matter.
We will now take up the business of the meeting. We have 4 matters to be considered by our shareholders today. The first is the election of directors for this coming year. The Board of Directors of the company has nominated the following 10 persons for election to the Board to serve until the next regular meeting of shareholders or until their successors have been elected and qualified. Willard D.
Overton, Michael J. Ancias, Michael J. Dolan, Stephen L. Eastman, Daniel L. Flores, Rita J.
Heisey, Darren R. Jackson, Daniel L. Johnson, Scott A. Satterlee and Renee K. Weiskopf.
I will now open the floor to a motion to formally place before this meeting the nomination of these individuals. I recognize Ms. Rebecca Trainer.
My name is Rebecca Treanor, and I am a shareholder of the company. I move to formally place before this meeting the nomination of the 10 individuals identified for election to the Board of Directors to serve until the next regular meeting of shareholders or until their successors are elected and qualified.
Thank you. As no other nominations have been made in accordance with the procedures established by the company bylaws, I declare the nominations to be closed. The next matter for consideration today is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2019. I would like to introduce Ms. Angela Dossedel.
Angela? She is a partner of that firm who is here today to answer any questions that you may have. No questions? Thank you, Angela. I will now open the floor to a motion to formally place before this meeting a resolution concerning the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2019.
I recognize Ms. Christine Halvorsen.
My name is Christine Halverson, and I am a shareholder of the company. I move that the following resolution be adopted. Resolved that the appointment of KPMG LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm for the company for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2019, be and hereby is ratified.
Thank you. Is there any discussion of this motion? It has been moved that the appointment of KPMG LLP as independent I will now open the floor to a motion to formally place before this meeting a resolution concerning the approval of executive compensation. I recognize Mr. David Ellifson.
My name is David Ellifson and I'm a shareholder of the company. I move that the following resolution be adopted, Resolves that the shareholders of the company approve on an advisory basis the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the compensation discussion and analysis compensation tables and related disclosures contained in the section of the proxy statement for the 2019 annual meeting of the shareholders captioned executive compensation.
Thank you. Is there any discussion of this motion? It has been moved that the compensation of certain of our executive officers be approved. The next matter for consideration today is the proposal related to diversity reporting. As you saw has submitted a proposal on behalf of Jeremy Kirschbaum and the Alan M.
Raimo Trust which was included in your proxy statement. The Board recommends that the shareholders vote against this proposal. I understand that Mr. Paul Rissman here as the Cosponsor of this proposal is here to present it. Mr.
Rissman, please approach the microphone at the front of the room. And I remind you that you will have 3 minutes to introduce your proposal.
Is it on? Yes. Okay. Thank you. My name is Paul Rissman.
I'd like to thank the management and Board of Fastenal for affording me the opportunity to present as USO's resolution, requesting metrics regarding Fastenal's workforce diversity and inclusion. I do not come today representing the human rights community and all those who oppose the human rights impacts of discrimination, although I support their goals. I am here to represent investors who depend on transparent disclosure to make proper investment decisions. In an average year, almost 95,000 discrimination claims are filed with the federal government. Investors are rarely informed about the details of diversity in the corporate workforce, however.
It is time for that to change. Principle of full disclosure has been cited over and over again as the cornerstone to our federal securities laws. Last November, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board published a compendium of voluntary standards for non financial reporting based on their decision usefulness to the reasonable investor. Among the metrics deemed material to company performance in the multiline and specialty retailers and distributors industry are those requested by our resolution regarding diversity and inclusion. While our company asserts that diversity is a critical component of its values and culture, investors need more.
Adequate disclosure necessarily implies comparability because investing essentially involves choices between competing alternatives and comparability requires metrics. Fastenal may be a wonderfully diverse company. The fact is investors will never be able to know that unless and until Fastenal discloses material metrics about diversity and inclusion. The Board asserts that the metrics requested can be misinterpreted and can expose confidential information. Recently, a company that made the same claims, Palantir Technologies, paid a fine to the Department of Labor settling discrimination charges.
Our company should be transparent about this. Diversity is a topic that affects corporate performance. Underrepresentation of women and minorities in management structures can result in allegations of discriminatory labor practices, including those related to promotions and wages. The resulting lawsuits can both eat into the thin margins of this industry as well as cause reputational damage for the responsible companies. Diversity can also have positive effects on Fastenal's performance.
The U. S. Population is currently undergoing a massive demographic shift with an increase in minority populations. Distributors that respond to this demographic trend and employee staff will be able to recognize the needs of these populations may be better able to capture demand from these segments, which can provide companies with a competitive advantage. Because diversity and inclusion can be material to our company's future, shareholders deserve disclosure of metrics that can adequately inform their decisions.
I therefore urge a yes vote on the following proposal. Shareholders request that the Board of Directors issue a report to shareholders by 180 days after the 2019 annual meeting at reasonable expense and excluding confidential information assessing the diversity of our company's workforce. Proponents recommend
Mr. Rissman, you're about at 3 minutes, so I request that you kind of conclude with that.
That the assessment include metrics on the percentage of gender categories for global operations and the standard equal employment opportunity commission, racial and ethnic group categories for U. S. Operations, disaggregated at a minimum into management and non managerial employees, the amounts of any legal or regulatory fines and settlements associated with diversity issues and a description of our policies and programs for fostering diversity of employees across our global operations.
Thank you
very much.
All right. Thank you.
All right.
Thank you. I want to remind shareholders that the Board recommends that they vote against this proposal for the reasons that we've already described in the proxy statement. Now, if you wish to vote on the motions by ballot, please raise your hand and the ballot will be provided to you. If you have appointed another person as proxy to vote your shares and have not terminated that proxy, you should not vote by ballot. After you have executed your ballot, it will be collected and tabulated.
The polls are now closed and the ballots will be counted. And I will turn the podium back over to Mr. Overton and Dan Dan to continue with the meeting. Thank you everyone.
Good morning, everybody. Before I start, I would just like to say 2 thank yous. The first one, Pastor Mark Dunke and his wife, Nancy, have been an important part of this community, an important part of the Plonus family. After 32 years at Faithfulton Church, Pastor Mark recently announced his intention to retire, spend a little more time with his family and we wish him all the best. I did want to personally thank him.
My wife and I have been blessed with 4 children, and Pastor Mark has been involved with the baking, if you will, the nurturing of our 4 children. And I'm pleased that he stayed around long enough for our youngest daughter, Anna, gets confirmed a week from Sunday and I'm glad Pastor Mark will be there for that marking point in her life.
I just
want to thank you. To my wife, Jenny, we'll celebrate 25 years in marriage next year. And she's been at every one of these annual meetings that I have spoken at. And she's not here today. She's with her brother in Middleton, Wisconsin.
He's unfortunately suffering from pancreatic cancer. She's down there for a few days helping her older brother. I wish Brother Dave all the best. And if I go long today, it's because my wife is not sitting right there doing this, which is her sign for Florness. Hey, wrap it up.
There's a meal. So if I go along, I apologize for that.
But I would like to say
thank you to everybody in this room for being a shareholder in Fastenal. Some of the things we spoke about in the shareholders letter this year was really every day the balance, sometimes artful, sometimes less than artful of looking at 4 distinct constituencies, our customers, our employees, our suppliers and our shareholders. In all honesty, the first two on that list typically get one of the first two spots and we believe for our suppliers and for our shareholders that our interests are aligned when we approach it that way. And I think the 30 years of our public existence and the 50 years of our existence has demonstrates the fruits of that labor and the wisdom of that choice. A long term perspective to the business, but with a short term edge of what's happening right now and reacting to the here and now as well.
So last week, can you advance the slide please? Last week, we held our annual customer expo. Last probably 10 years, we've held it in Nashville, the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, wonderful facility. Thought it was time for a change in venue, so we moved it West and we are in Aurora, Colorado, a new Gaylord Rockies facility. So last week, we had roughly 280 suppliers set up a trade show.
And at that event, over a course of 3 days, we had 7,600 people there to learn how Fastall could be a better partner to our customers and our suppliers and provide something special in their business. If I think about the topics we covered, we really centered on 10 things, you can flip the slide ahead please, 10 things that we actively talk about with our customers every day of what we believe it means to be a strategic partner within their business. And the 3 that I focused on in the start of each day was Dan talking to the room at breakfast, probably not the best way to start today, but it gets maybe gets everybody going and out of the room quickly. But we really talked about the proximity of the Fastenal business model. So a local footprint, think of the branch you see here in the Winona community, a local footprint yet with a global reach.
So whether you have one location in your business or 200 locations in your business, Fastenal can be something special and be local to each and every one of those spots. And in an era where more and more businesses are taking a step back, lowering their cost structure by being further away from their customer and doing much more of their business digitally. We embrace the digital world as well. However, we embrace it with the hands on knowledge of knowing what's going on inside the four walls of your business. It allows us to be, again, something special when it comes to being a supplier.
The other one touched on was solutions. We don't live in a one size fits all world, and we like to provide our customers with an option, with things that are customized to their business and with local knowledge of what they do, we're able to pull that off in a way no others can. The final one was expertise. Many of you in this community are aware of the Fastenal School of Business. We've talked about it at prior annual meetings.
It's a real special team that brings knowledge to a group of folks that often start with Fast Stone without a lot of experience. We're a fast paced environment. We hire talent and energy and we say, come join us. Here's how we operate. We will help teach you about industrial distribution, about our products.
But be open to it and you will find customers that will embrace that. And if that expertise and John in a few minutes is going to talk about some of the expertise we deliver digitally that puts us in a special place to help that customer conduct their business. At the event, we often talk about in each of the folks attending, you can flip the slide forward again, please. Each of the people attending have examples from their local market and I always reach out ahead of time and ask folks for some examples. So here are a handful of slides from last week where we talked about individual customer circumstances and the savings we help them find by bringing a different approach to the business.
So that one you see in the upper left, it was a customer that we have 7 on sites with. So that's where we set up a branch inside their 4 walls. And by challenging them in what they do, we were able to over the last several years identify $3,000,000 of savings across all their facilities. In addition to that, we identified in total about $12,000,000 of savings, both hard and soft. And you might ask, well, what are soft cost savings?
That's things that help the business operate more efficiently. It's not tangible, it's not you were buying 10 of these and now you need 8 or you were paying $1 and now you can buy it for $0.90 That's what the $3,000,000 is about. But what we bring to their equation is fresh ideas how to approach the world. And in an environment where we have historically low unemployment, soft cost savings means efficiency in their operation. And there's 2 ways to add hours to your day.
One is to add hours. Another is to spend less time doing what you're doing last week. They both work and they both bring value. That's what we present to our customers. The next slide is one that I singled out and it's a situation where we brought in our safety specialists.
We have 70 safety specialists, certified safety specialists that travel around the country. We brought them in to discuss with a customer. We looked at the underlying data and they weren't getting the performance out of their gloves that we felt they should get in this business because we have a lot of customers in similar industries. And we came in and we said you know what the problem is? The glove you're buying is too inexpensive.
That's a cut level 1 resistance glove and you need a 4. It's a more expensive glove. It will save you money because you will get better performance. In the next 12 months, that one recommendation saved that customer $100,000 As you can see, that's a big operation. They use a lot of gloves.
But it's ideas like that. You can't deliver that without knowledge of what's happening in their operation. How is that glove being used? You don't get that in a warehouse or behind in a web interface because you don't have firsthand knowledge of what they're doing. All you can provide is fulfillment.
We provide fulfillment and so, so much more. The next slide here, I thought it was good to take a multiyear view because a lot of folks are excited about 2018 and I'm one of them. We had a very good year. The team had a great year, partly because they performed at a really high level, partly because the economy gave us the environment to enjoy growth. So if you look over the last several years, some things that jump out and if you look at that first top band, just if you could highlight those first two for me, please.
Some things that jump out for me. In 2015, our business really weakened because the environment weakened. Were there some things we could have done better that year? You could say that yes to every year in the last 52 years. But the economy did not create an environment for us to grow and we were contracting by the end of the year.
And for 2016, we grew at 2%. But we believed in the ultimate outcome. It's that long term perspective. It's a great big market out there and we have a relatively small piece. So we keep investing for the future.
And in the short term, sometimes that means your earnings go backwards and that's what we saw in 2016. If you look at it by in the bottom slide, in the bottom part of the slide, our nonfasters was growing okay. It was growing mid single digits primarily because of things like vending and the fact that it's a newer business for us in inroads with national accounts. But fasteners, which is really about production in the environment, that business was negative for us in 2016. But how times can change.
By 2017, not only have we broken through and gotten growth in sales and earnings, we had double digit growth and it felt really good and it tasted pretty good too in all honesty. In 2018, we took that one step further. The team really embraced some change, willing to learn and change, willing to develop a plan for the future and willing to truly engage with our customers about how we can be special and our customers reciprocated by saying, we love what you're doing, let's do some more together. And that's what our business is about and that's why we're successful because our underlying business opportunity grows with the economy, but we still have a relatively small market share. I believe we have years of growth and years of opportunity ahead of us just in North America.
And by the way, we've moved beyond the North American coast in recent years. The next two slides, I call these perspective slides. And I'm going to step over here and grab my hard copy because I can't quite see that. Okay, I'm 55 and these bright lights are not my friend today. But a lot of times when I'm talking internally, I talk about the business 10 years ago.
And 2,007 is the year I always hang my hat on because 2,008, 2009 for those of you who remember, it was kind of a weird period with the economy and it did some weird distortions to our numbers as well. But 2,007 was kind of a normal year. And so I decided to go back 11 years beyond 2,007, so do that a double and go back to 1996. 6. And a lot of times, the best way to tell the story is to talk it in the context of $100 transaction because that's graspable by so many people and it makes for a better story.
So in 1996, when we'd sell $100 worth of product, our gross profit at the time, we were primarily a faster distributor, was about $0.53 on that dollar. We spent about $0.34 to operate the business. Keep in mind back in that day, we were opening a lot of new branches. We were spending a lot of money opening branches. We were growing like crazy.
It was really neat time. That happens to be the year I joined Fastenal. And I was no one was more proud of joining an organization like Fastenal than Dan Flores was in 1996 because all of a sudden I got to hang with some great people and be part of something really special. So we would generate about $19 worth of profit. As you can tell back then our tax rate was about 40%.
So that would translate into $11 and we spent almost all of it on working capital because we were growing so rapidly. Inventory, new locations, new inventory, new locations, customers buy something, you extend terms, so some accounts receivable, but investing in working capital. By 2007, the business had changed a little bit, but not a lot. We've gotten bigger. There was more of those $100 bills.
But if I look at that same $100 transaction, our mix had changed quite dramatically. So we were selling a lot more non fasters. So our margin had slipped a little bit. Our average branch only grew slightly. So we were spending about $0.33 on the dollar to operate the business and we've generated about $18 in profit on that transaction.
We would our tax rate had gotten a little bit lower because as we had expanded beyond the Midwest, expanded beyond the United States, tax rates in the rest of the country are a little bit lower, so we're slowly pulling our income tax rate down. And our net earnings were about $11 We took almost all of that. And because our business had changed and the rate of branch openings had changed, we didn't need as much additional working capital. And on that $11 in profit, we generated about $11 in operating cash flow. What we could do now with that $11 is we could turn around and invest it in the capital of the business, not the working capital, inventory and receivables, things like that, but the fixed capital.
We could expand our trucking fleet. And if you recall back in the day, we took big strides in our distribution network our trucking network, excuse me. We could introduce automation into our warehouses. We've talked about that at previous meetings because we now had the capital at which to do that. We started doing this little dabbling with Bob's original idea from 1967.
They call it a vending machine. That took a massive investment over the last decade. It's been about $650,000,000 that we've invested in vending. It's now a $1,000,000,000 business within Fastenal. But we had that freedom because the economics of our business was changing.
By the way, we also could start doing what Will talked about earlier. We started to pay about 2,003. We dramatically changed our dividend payout because the economics of our business was changing. Let's go to 2018. Margin has dropped a little bit more.
Now maybe that's because Floris is at this podium now instead of Will, I'm not sure. Maybe it's because our business has changed. Maybe it's because 25% of our revenue is now On-site. And in that On-site model, our gross margin is much lower, but our cost structure is much lower. So what you see is instead of spending $33 to operate the business like it was 11 years ago, it's now 28.
So it means we can operate at a different gross margin. We can understand our expense pattern better. We have a different fundamental business and we can generate a similar level of earnings, dollars 20 on that $100 sale. One thing that is quite dramatic, you'll notice is our tax rate changed dramatically, but a little over a year ago. And that means we generate now about $15 of earnings on that $100 sale.
And last year, almost all that resulted in free cash flow after funding inventory. It was $0.90 on the dollar. Frankly, that's one negative to last year. I talked about that in the shareholders letter. And that's on me.
We spent a little too much on inventory last year. Some of that was inflation, some of that was expected, but we could have done better. That 14 should have been a 15 and that 90 should have been a 95 or 96, percent,
but I'm
still pretty satisfied with the year. But I thought I'd give a perspective piece to our P and L. The second one isn't so much backwards looking. The second one is looking at 10 years ago again, but it's looking at today. And if you think about the business a decade ago, we were a $2,000,000,000 organization and it was almost all in the United States and Canada.
If you add up all the rest of the planet, it was $30,000,000 in revenue. We were evenly split between fasteners and non fasteners. So for the 1st 30 years, we had done primarily fasteners. From years 31 to 40, we got serious about the non fasteners and it caught up really quickly and we were split $1,000,000,000 of each. Our branch network was just under 2,200 locations.
We had 150 of these things we called Onsites. We didn't really know what they were. They were kind of an accident in all honesty. We couldn't find a building in a given market and the customer said, hey, you know what, I have 2,500 feet over in the corner of this building or in this building on my campus, you're more than welcome to move in there. And what we found is, hey, free rent, that's kind of cool.
But what we also found is with free rent, we could go after a wider swath of business and our gross margin became, while important, a little less important because our cost structure was changing and we found customers loved what we did and we started to see something special there. The other thing is we started dabbling in that little thing, again Bob's original idea for Fastenal, a vending company. We started dabbling in it back in 10 years ago, we had a couple of 100 of them. Today, we're a $5,000,000,000 organization. That $30,000,000 business is now a $400,000,000 business when you look at outside U.
S. And Canada, it's growing wonderfully. The largest single piece of that is in Mexico, great people, great business, great customers, great partnerships. The non fasteners, oh my gosh, they've taken off. So over $3,000,000,000 of our revenue is now non fasteners.
A third of that revenue goes through that little blue box called the vending machine. That's what's changed that business so dramatically is we brought something special to the point of use for our customer. It's convenient and it lowers consumption. We've actually contracted the market. Companies can talk about green initiatives and all this kind of stuff.
That $1,000,000,000 in revenue that today goes through a vending machine before Fastenal came up with a vending platform, that would have been $1,300,000,000 worth of spend. There's $300,000,000 that we've removed from the economy because of vending that was pure waste. If you want a green initiative, I'll take that one any day of the week and twice on Sunday. The fasteners, they're no slouch either. We've almost doubled in size in that decade.
Our business has changed though. Our branch count really hasn't grown. In fact, it's contracted. We've closed quite a few branches in the last 5, 6 years because some of those branches are morphing into Onsites. So Minneapolis, St.
Paul, that's our most established large metropolitan area. We have a $75,000,000 business up in the Twin Cities. Our branch count is actually smaller than it was a decade ago, but our on sites have flourished. So a bunch of that business has just moved and we're serving a same from a different spot and that business is growing like crazy. So we have about 3,100 locations now around the planet.
Our average branch does 140,000. So the economics we talked about on that last page, what's changed isn't that we've gotten smarter. Hopefully, we have. But with 140,000 average branch versus a decade ago, a 70,000 average branch, The economics completely changed. We had a term for that 10 years ago.
We call it pathway to profit and it was really a morphing of the business. Our average On-site today does $125,000 a month. Now it does create one risk to the business. We are more connected to the economy from the standpoint of like you saw in 2015 2016, if the economy gets weak, it impacts us. The economy is strong, it impacts us.
I love the business that we've morphed into and we will continue to challenge and keep morphing into it even more because it's an incredibly successful and rewarding business for our customers, our employees, our shareholders and our suppliers. We're not over there, sorry. We have 80,000 vending machines plus scattered around the planet. On top of that, we have another 15,000 where we become a leasing company, where companies use that vending technology in their maintenance area to check-in and check out tools. It's really handy.
I'm in maintenance and I'm wondering where the hammer drill is. And I know Will checked it out 2 hours ago and I can come up and say, hey, can I borrow the hammer drill? I know where it is. And until Will checks it back in, I know where it is. If he doesn't check it back in, I know who had it last, so I can track it down.
In addition to that, we have about 60,000 bin stocks out there. Actually, that's one number that's misleading. That's how many bin stocks have planograms. The actual number is probably 80000, 90000 bin stocks out there serving customers throughout the business. The final column I want to touch on is looking out and saying, what do we think we look like when we're a $10,000,000,000 company?
I'm not making a forward looking statement. We're a public company. I'm not going to get myself in trouble here. I'm dumb. I'm not stupid.
But I think it's good to talk about what we think it's going to look like because it influences our priorities. It influences what we're about. So that $10,000,000,000 company, I think outside of U. S. And Canada, it's a $1,000,000,000 plus component.
Here it's $1,300,000,000 One thing I can guarantee you, every number on here is wrong, but it's a way of thinking about the future. I think when we're a $10,000,000,000 company, 3 fourths of our revenue will be non fasteners. The non fastener market is a lot bigger than fasteners. And the reason our fasteners are sold is such a distinct business within Fastenal is we've been doing it for 52 years, but incredible opportunity to keep growing it. I don't think our branch count changes.
In fact, I think it drops more. I think in U. S. And Canada, we'll have fewer branches when we're a $10,000,000,000 company than we have today. And the only reason the number isn't smaller is we're still opening outside the U.
S. And Canada. But I believe our On-site network will continue to flourish. And when we're a $10,000,000,000 company, we will have more Onsites than branches, and the investments we make today are based on what we see in our future. So I'm really excited John Silverberg is going to come up here and talk in a few minutes and talk about technology and I'm really excited about the things his team is working on.
Finally, I think at that point in time, our average bench is going to be 190,000. Now the message to our customers last week, what that means is we will have more inventory in your local market to support your local needs. You talk about same day availability, nobody will be able to touch us. They can't it's difficult to compete with FastStone today. It becomes only more difficult as our average branch gets larger.
Finally, I think we'll have over 200,000 vending machines. I think we'll have another 40 some 1000 on top of it that we lease out. So we'll be even more of a leasing company, bringing value to our customers. And I think we'll have a quarter of a 1000000 bin stocks. This is the part where my wife would look at me and say, Florence, come on.
So Jeff Watts was going to join us today. So I'm going to touch on a few of his slides. He's on a customer call. Jeff Watts leads our international business. And when he told me he had a customer visit that he's been working on for months, I said, hey, Jeff, I'll see you next year.
So Jeff will be talking to us next year. But this is an excerpt from Bob's letter back in early 1995 after we had finished up 1994. And that was the first time Fasten could say we are an international business because we had 2 locations in Southern Ontario. And I'm pleased to say and for those folks that are from Canada listening to this, congratulations on hitting 25 years. That's one of the reasons Jeff was going to come in.
Jeff is originally from Canada and he's pretty proud of the business we have there. It's a pretty special business. If I take a look at the next slide, it's looking at just our international business in general. So this is 25 countries strong, of which Canada and Mexico are the 2 largest pieces, but a flourishing business in Latin America and Europe and in Asia. Some things I would point out, and there's a lot of stats here.
It's a $700,000,000 business outside the U. S. It took 25 years to get there. To tell you about the strength of having resources and a business model and people, it took Fastenal 32 years in the United States to hit $700,000,000 Our international business did it in 25 years because they had a heck of a help right out of the chute, financial, sourcing, people development and a defined business model. But really pleased with the business we have there.
And to me, one of the most rewarding things is the Fastenal business model translates really well into other cultures because it's about find great people, give them a challenge, give them an opportunity, get out of their way and let them amaze you. And that's what Fastenal is all about. I'm going to close my talk here by just touching on a few more items that were in the letter to shareholders this year. And it's really about as we prepare on our journey to be that $10,000,000,000 company and questions we need to ask ourselves every day. When it comes to customers, what capabilities do we need to develop to be something special?
And what is that going to be 2, 5, 10 years from now? What skills do we need from an employee perspective, whether it's developed through the School of Business or by a nurturing mindset, a challenging mindset to challenge people to improve and grow and discover new things. From a supplier, what enhancements do we need to our supply chain? And then finally, for our shareholders, I believe most of you in this room will be here when we're a $10,000,000,000 company because you found investing in Fastenal to be financially rewarding. We will do everything in our power to keep it that way.
With that, I'm going to turn it over to John Soderberg to give an Information Technology update. John is our Executive Vice President of Information Technology. He's a long time employee of the organization. I'll let him talk about that. He's also a darn good friend.
John?
Thank you, Dan. I just want to elaborate a little bit on what Dan mentioned. This past week was our customer show. I'd like to give you a little bit of a lens through IT to the customer show. We had about, as Dan mentioned, just under 7,000 attendees, 300 suppliers were there and these are supplier partner manufacturers, with individual booths showing the products that they sell.
We had Fastenal products there, exclusive brands. We had our industrial services representative. And we also had our technology area where we're really showing how all of this comes together, how we are able to really separate ourselves in managing products for our customers because our customers come to our show with the expectation that we help them solve problems. And they're not just domestic customers, they're international customers. They've got very large footprints.
And so they bring these to us at the show and they're looking for answers. And so we offer trainings at this and then we do any live demos 1 on ones with customers, customer meetings, etcetera. So we're coming off a very exciting week internally, engaging with these customers. But in preparation, we did put together a video to show at the show and today to really give an idea of how technology assists our customers in solving, or creating opportunities for the areas that they challenge us in. And so Mark, if you wouldn't mind rolling the video.
Today's businesses are under pressure to produce more with less, less inventory, less time, less cost. But the push for less can create more problems, more vendors and SKUs, more locations, touches and processing and ultimately more complexity and risk. But there doesn't have to be a trade off between cost and complexity. At Fastenal, we help you reduce both by investing in a powerful combination, great people close to your business, empowered by technology. That includes predictive analytics, helping us pull in products ahead of demand warehouse automation, helping us fill orders with greater speed and accuracy transportation technology, helping us run the safest, most efficient truck routes to support your business and mobility, automated supply and e business solutions helping our local service teams become even more engaged and effective.
Mobility keeps your Fastenal team connected to our IT systems as they service and inform your business, enabling them to check stock availability, provide quotes, process orders and capture and update data on the fly. A key feature is the ability to modify stocking planograms, visualizing the exact location of every Fastenal managed product within your business, which brings us to our automated supply solutions, a toolbox of technology to track, monitor and control the products used to run your daily operation. Looking to track assets? Utilize our solutions to automate the checkout and return process, connect each asset to the current user and receive alerts when items are due back, creating complete accountability. Looking for a better way to monitor inventory?
We offer a lineup of devices that sense your inventory levels and generate replenishment orders when it's time to restock. Solutions include 2 bin systems equipped with RFID technology to trigger replenishment, point of view spins that utilize infrared light beams to sense and report current inventory levels and high precision scales that present a live view of the exact quantity on hand. When stock runs low, you receive an alert and we receive an alert, making us fully accountable for our service. Looking to bring control to high use consumables? Our automated dispensing devices connect each product to an individual, a department, a project and other metrics you define.
Whether it's a coil turning, a pusher shifting or a digital scale sensing a subtle change in weight, every time an item moves, it's tracked and reported, extending IoT, the Internet of Things to everyday shop supplies. What about unplanned purchases? We're all familiar with the standard drop ship process, order, wait, receive, repeat, a reactive, repetitive manual cycle that racks up costs and delays with every turn. At Fastenal, we offer solutions that help you break through to faster service and deeper value. A prime example, Fastenal Express on fastenal.com, an e commerce connection thousands of same day or one day product solutions stocked in our local branch or DC.
Place an order online, potentially have it in your hands within the hour. The procure to pay process becomes even more seamless through punch out or B2B integration, creating an electronic connection to procure Fastenal products and exchange business documents within your own procurement system. E business efficiency is backed by flexible fulfillment, direct ship, BMI, local delivery, including same day delivery, in branch pickup and coming soon 20 fourseven automated pickup. Look for this, pick up in one of these, either outside our local branch or within your facility. Mobility, automated supply and e business all work together to capture key data points.
Inventory locations, min maxes, quantity on hand, SKU information, users, turns, frequency, jail codes, PO or job numbers, orders, deliveries and more. All of this information flows to a common point of connection, Fast360 on fastenal.comandfastenal. Ca. Analyze purchasing patterns by facility, sales channel and product category or focus on an individual part to understand the spend dynamics behind it. Search for parts across your facilities all the way down to a specific vendor vending position and view a digital blueprint of how inventory is organized by location, including planograms that show exactly where the product is stocked.
A unique view made possible by something only Fastenal offers, great people close to your business and powered by technology. Fastenal, where industry meets innovation. So first, I'd really like to thank Mark, Nick and Jake for putting that video together. What they did in 4 minutes would have taken me an hour to explain. So I think we're all thankful for that.
And I'm not I didn't miss the lesson there, right? So there's a lot of exciting things going on within our department. The things that you saw within the video are things that my team works on here domestically and abroad to bring those things to marketplace for our customers. And I thought I would start by just really focusing in on one area of technology and a product that many of us are familiar with. And that's really our fastener offering.
Our fastener offering is so fundamentally core to our business and our beginnings. And I just thought I'd walk you through where we began there and where we're at today, servicing those types of items. So when you think about fasteners and right now we're surrounded by 1,000 of them on these shelves, there's a lot of complexity there. It's a very diverse product offering. So a good start with a range of fastener offering is probably in the 50,000 plus products that are available.
So when you think about that, there's a lot of complexity. There's sizes. So head style, it could be diameter, it could be length, package quantity, materials, grades, etcetera. And there's a lot that goes into identifying the right part for the customer or what the customer is looking for. Mark, if you'd switch the slide deck.
So if we step back in time and you think about that world of fasteners, there's a picture of a desk there and a pen and paper. And as orders would come in or we would go out and get them, it was very a very manual process. So customers may call in orders, we would go out and meet with customers and see what their needs were, identify their needs. And over time, that evolved to, okay, now we're going to label products. We're going to label our bins.
We're going to, which that then evolved into bar coding, which then led to scanning, which then led to the fax machine. And then today, a lot of that is done through different types of integrations with different customers where we're exchanging information. So over the last 40, 50 years, it's certainly evolved. And in the last 10, 15 years, the technology has moved very rapidly with those demands. Go ahead, Mark.
So it brings us to today and these were mentioned briefly in the video, but I wanted to expand upon this and what does it really mean for our employees, our customers as we service these types of environments or supply chains for our customers. And what I have here is three examples. The first one is a scale system. And what I want you to know about this is that it's we identify an area and then we identify the parts to go in that area, okay? And then the scale will tell us exactly what quantity on hand is, exactly the quantity on hand for this part at this location.
And some of our customers in very dispersed areas throughout the world, that's very important that they know the exact quantity on hand for inventory. And so our scale solution has been a very good option for those environments. The second one is one that we're very proud of. That was something that we developed in house with the partnership of a third party. And that's our RFID bins.
And I would want you to think of this like a gas gauge, okay? So again, we've identified a location. We put bins there and then we have this RFID or I should say infrared technology. So think of it as these readers going back and forth telling us approximately how much inventory is on hand. So it doesn't tell you the exact quantity.
It tells you blue, there's plenty there. We kind of break it up in thirds. Blue, there's plenty on hand. Yellow, we're getting low. Red, we need to go out and service that location, okay?
The third one is RFID. It's a very simple use case for RFID. At the top of the shelf there, there's technology embedded within that shelf that when a bin is empty, it's lifted out and it's put up there, it triggers a reorder point to our branch location. So in that environment, we're really just managing minmaxes. There may be 2 bins there, there could be as many as 4 or more and our branch is immediately notified.
And so why this is important to our customers is they want to make sure that we know that they're being serviced and that they're not going to run out of their products, okay. So we do all three of these today and I would be it'd be a miss if I didn't say to you, we also do some of the older things that I described where there's still bends, it's not smart technology, we're managing parts, but we physically still have to go out there and check it. In these environments, neither the customer nor Fastenal is physically going out and having to check the environment location. It's more about access and need and replenishment. Okay.
Mark, if you'd flip the next slide. So how does that translate back to a branch or an on-site location? And this is what our branch employees see. So and this example is actually an infrared bin. And what it tells you here is it shows you the parks that are in that managed location and you can see the small triggers there, blue, yellow and red.
It does send our branch locations alert and if they want to click on an individual part, they can actually see approximately the quantity on hand. And so this is something that we've really introduced and brought live here at the end of last year, beginning of this year. It's a very exciting technology for our customers and for our branch employees and you can see it drives a lot of efficiencies not only for our customer but for Fastenal as well. On the flip side of this, there is a customer view. And so our customers can log into fastenal.com and they can go into an area that we call Fastenal 360 and they can check out a physical location and drill down into the part.
And again, I'm just showing you an example of infrared, but the technology goes beyond infrared. As we mentioned in the video, there's probably 2 dozen different types of technology out there that we use to manage our products in for customers. And after this discussion this morning, if you'd like to walk next door to the Innovation Center, we have all of this technology on display and you can see it actively working. But again, it's just giving the customer the confidence that we are we're accountable, we're monitoring their systems and we're replenishing it so that they don't have to worry about their supply chain. Mark?
Fastenal 360, I mentioned it just a minute ago. Fastenal 360 is something that we introduced just over, I guess, I would say 2 years ago. And when you think about Fastenal with our footprint, our ability to go on-site, our supply chain and logistics, we're really connected with the customer. And it would if you think about the customer coming into fastenal.com, we're not just a transactional website out there servicing and shipping products through 3rd parties. We're intimate with the customer to the point of moving in on an on-site, right?
So all of these products, a customer can go if they're managed products, a customer can go into fastenal.com and they can see exactly what we're doing with these products. So my business is really showing the customer, here are the areas within your facility, whether it's a job site or a plant or a large maintenance environment that we're managing for you. And here's the status of these products. My inventory is their ability to go in and drill into and see the actual inventory that we're managing for them and they can look at that per category, they can look at it per site, whatever way that they want to see it. Then last piece of it is my spend.
And my spend is really I can categorically go in and I can run my own reports. I can see frequency. I can see usage. I can actually see products that aren't under management from Fastenal that I purchased from Fastenal. And it's important that I mentioned to you there's a distinction between what is managed, how it's managed and what is purchased from Fastenal and should it be under management.
So that really brings us to Fastenal Analytics Platform. And when I think about this, Dan mentioned Jeff Watts. When I think about Jeff and all his customers internationally, a large growing area of our business is our national account program. And those customers are not just in one location, one state, let alone one country. So they want an area to come in that they can see across their enterprise.
They want to see what they're consuming everywhere and what's under management everywhere. And this platform really gives them the ability in more of a business analytics or a BI platform to go in and have that visibility no matter where it's at in the world. So it's proved to be a very powerful tool for us and we've taken all of these products that are under management today and we've incorporated it into a search. Again, it's kind of like the concept of vending, not because $1,300,000,000 in vending is actually $1,000,000,000 in vending once we put our machinery in. I think about our search engine, when a customer goes in to look for products and they're logged into our website, before they buy that product, we actually show them where that product is within their supply chain.
So I always like to think of our website as kind of an ERP light system because it's more strategic than it is transactional. It helps them make better decisions and it gives them good information. And then people and technology, again, we 70% of our employees are in front of customers. It's our customers are not just dealing with some digital interface. It's relationship driven.
So when we focus on technology, it's how do we improve our position in the market and how do we improve the interaction of our employees with that customer. So when we talk about the Internet of Things that were connected, when you go back in our innovation center, you're going to see a lot of our IoT, Internet of Things devices and they're capturing information. Information is very important to our customers so they can make better decisions. We want to help guide them and show them how to make better decisions and we do that through the data that we provide them. Driving labor efficiencies through our store, it's really about that employee.
If that employee is in front of a customer, I want to arm them with everything they have within their POS system. So when they're away from a branch or they're away from a crib in an on-site facility, they're standing in front of a customer, we want them well armed with information so they can make quick decisions. It really extends the supply chain beyond sitting in front of a desk or being on a phone in front of a desk quickly. They can make quick decisions. So a lot of our efforts within mobility that we're launching and promoting out within the marketplace are really what's going to help us continue to drive efficiencies.
And as that grows and matures, it's really about putting that also in the hands of customers. And finally, predictive analytics, and that's really our newest launch within Fastenal 360. I know that Christine spoke briefly earlier, but at the customer show this past week, she had the longest line all week. So customers coming up waiting in line, I know she told me she did over 70 plus quick present 5 to 20 minute presentations throughout our show because this area of our business is very important to our customers. They want visibility.
They want to know how to use the tools and interact with the tools that we're providing. And so again, they want to make better decisions. We're in a very competitive landscape and they need information to make those decisions. And finally, technology is really about transforming the way we do business. And we say we here, we don't that doesn't just mean Fastenal.
It's not limited to Fastenal. The we is the way our customers do business. They have a lot of demands on us for information and we want to provide them that information so they can make good decisions. It is also providing technology provides our employees with better ways, more efficient ways, more information, so they can better run their branch activities and better run their on sites as well. And finally, it's our supply chain.
Our customers and our supply chain downriver, where we're pulling products from, they want visibility to where these products are going. They want to understand what's happening. What is your movement under managed products? What's your movement in spot buys? What categories or end user markets are you selling into?
These are common question and we're going to continue to identify these things. And so when we say transforming technology, we, it's not just Fastenal. I want you to know that, that supply chain runs deep for our customers through our suppliers. So on that note, I will wrap it up and I will be in the innovation center, happy to give any tours or answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you, John. A couple of things I realized in my first talk, I went about 6 minutes long, so I'll try get us back on schedule here. One thing I did not do, I didn't introduce myself. My name is Dan Flores. Whenever I hear the Daniel in all the different legal stuff, it makes me cringe a little bit.
It makes me think I'm a kid again. And either my grandmother or my mom is yelling out the word Daniel and it usually wasn't good news for young Dan. So I prefer Dan. If I think about our business and I really think I want to touch a little bit on the employees. We had a little bit extra time because Jeff isn't here today.
And I just wanted to touch on why I'm really excited and why I believe we're wired for growth. And it's really about we have a great team throughout the Fasten organization. And Bob and Will left quite awake when I think of the leadership they represented the Fasten on its 1st 50 years. And so one of the things that we've worked on in the last year is to develop our own leadership course. If you could flip one side forward, please.
And I just wanted to touch on what we consider to be the obligations of leadership within Fastenal and it really manifests itself in these 5 bullets. First one is an obligation to develop yourself each and every day for where the business is going, what people need. The second obligation is to develop others around to help them be more successful and to frankly free up the energy for the organization to be more successful. The third one is lead with directions. Where are we going?
Why are we going there? Why do we think it makes sense? What's the value in it? In getting folks on board, Bob used to say, get a team pursuing a common goal and you can do everything. And the wisdom is quite profound in that statement.
Align people and resources. When I think of what John's team is doing to help align energy we have in the organization, it's powerful and I'm excited about what it means. And finally, with all that, inspire the commitment of those around you. There's great people out there that want to join great organizations. We're looking for them every day and we're able to inspire commitment in them and our customers see that as something special.
The next slide has a bit of a montage of pictures. And I thought I'd touch on a few things that I've learned in over 3 years of being in this role. One of the hardest parts of this job is every month, I get a list of 1, 2 or 3 people, unfortunately, have passed away within the Fastenal family. And so each month, I'm writing 2 or 3 condolences notes from the Blue team. Many times it involves a call with somebody in a local branch or in a district to learn a little bit about this individual.
If it's a young person, unfortunately, sometimes it's a car accident. Other causes occur, but we really are part of a unique family and we want to we hold each other dear. To that extent, lost a really good friend in the last 12 months, Jeff Voelter, who was a 30 plus year employee. I suspect many of you from the Winona community know JB or knew JB, excuse me. I'm pleased to say his son, Jared, worked for us over in the shop.
And we're excited to have another member of the Bolter family along with his brother, Mark, who's worked for us for many years. We talk about different stories and Will mentioned the individual and their investment, Fastenal. Last December at our customer our employee event, I had a young man come up to me and he said, Mr. Flores, I just want to thank you. And I asked him, I said, hey, you're welcome, What for?
And he said about 5, 6 years ago, you spoke in a room and you gave us some financial advice. And I'm like, this is where you get yourself in trouble because it's like, what did I say? He said, you really challenged us and you walked through the economics of why it is foolish not to participate in a 401 plan at Fastenal. You went into some detail about how the match works and then the economics of doing that. So because I took your advice and he said, you know what, it was a little painful at first to set that money aside.
My 401 account right now has $50,000 in and I would not have had that money in my 401 if you hadn't challenged us with that 6 years ago and I just want to thank you. Made my entire month, actually made my year. That's really neat because you're able to share a positive influence on another human being. Speaking of sharing a positive influence, I want to read a brief letter and it was written about a month ago to a good friend at work, Ginnie, and said, Ginnie, Kathy began planning her retirement in late 2017. She wasn't exactly sure when, but knew she would be finished in the next year or 2.
Kathy wanted to make sure that the customer relationships she had built at Fastenal during the previous 18 years were protected and transitioned to a new leader. She also wanted to make the transition as easy as possible for her team members at Fastenal. In March of 2017, Kathy stepped down as General Manager into an account specialist role. Now that so stepping down from a leadership role to an account specialist role, which also meant a reduction in pay. She supported the store's largest account.
For the next 12 months, Kathy did an outstanding job of servicing her customers and also mentoring the new GM. In February of 2018, Kathy fully retired from Fastenal. With a full year of transition time, we were able to fully prepare to take care of the key accounts at that branch and to take care of all customers at that branch. I'm very thankful for the time Kathy spent with us at Fastenal and especially thankful that she trusted me enough to develop a long term transition plan with me that worked out in the best interest of our customers, our company and our employees. Thank you, Adam.
Kathy Pickett, I might have met her years ago, I might not have. I had a nice conversation with her shortly before she retired because I'd heard about this story and I'm just like, wow, that's a person I want to know. She is special. I'm proud to be associated with her. And last night, I met her husband, Larry.
And I'm pleased to say after a year a little over a year of retirement, so you have 2 empty nesters, they're retired, they moved to the family farm, they're still speaking to each other, which is really cool. Kathy, will you please stand up and will the room recognize Kathy? She's special. And last night when I met her in person, I got a great big hug. I felt really good and I'm pleased to say I'm part of her team.
Next slide. Each year at our employee event, we recognize our 25 year employees. And so I thought I'd snap a quick look at how many employees we have in the company right now that have hit different milestones. So we have so keep in mind, 25 years ago, we were a much different organization. And while some of the folks have retired, we still have 181 people within Fastenal that have been here for 25 or more years.
76 of those people have been here for 30 years. 16 have been here for more than 35 years and some of you may have noticed the sign up front for all of our employees that have been with Fastenal for more than 40 years, we decided to put in our lobby in over on Third Boulevard an acknowledgment of that accomplishment. There's 3 people who are on the list. So there's 3 in addition to the 4. I told Bob Kerlin the other day, I said, if he wanted to retire so soon, we could have had a 50 year plaque.
But he didn't make it. But I'm proud to say Bob Kerlin and Bill Becker and Bob Strauss are the 3 people that first hit 40 years with Fastenal. And over the last several years, 2 additional people hit, Dan Koner and Linda Pagliubecky. And we have 2 people that will hit their 40 either have hit or will hit 40 years this year. Nick Lundqvist hit 40 years in March and I was able to his team, his friends were able to really surprise him.
Nick is not a real sentimental person, but he's really a softy at heart. And I think he had to leave the room because I think he was getting a little choked up by the occasion. At least that's what I heard from the team. Maybe they embellished. I don't think so.
2nd person won't hit it until August. So, hey, Dana, you got to stick around. But Dana Johnson will hit 40 years in August and he will his name will be added actually his name is already on there. We think he's pretty safe. He's going to be here till August.
But he will also receive this. Like I say, it's nothing fancy. It's just a way to say thank you and to recognize an incredible accomplishment that just doesn't happen anymore. So 40 plus years. With the 40 plus year employees in the room, this includes you, Bob, would you please stand up to be recognized?
With that, we'll turn it over to a little Q and A. Fire away. And I believe there's mics set up towards the front. If somebody could raise their hand kind of where the mics are at, I think there's one over here. And I believe there's one over here.
But if you have a question, please feel free to come up and share your thoughts. And if you don't have any questions, we don't have to do Q and A. Branch, excuse me, or the technology area or you're thinking about lunch? With that, I don't think there's any questions. Very good.
I will turn it back over to, I think, I don't know if it's John or Will to finish up the results of the vote and figure out the price.
Okay. Get back to the business. It's probably this new building that we moved over here. The questions, I said, we're good. Or maybe it's fantastic results for like the last several years.
The ballots have now been counted in the report of the Inspector of Elections indicate that Willard D. Oberton, Michael J. Anzius, Michael J. Dolan, Stephen L. Eastman, Daniel L.
Flores, we call him Dan, Rita J. Heisey, Darren R. Jackson, Daniel L. Johnson, Scott A. Satterlee and Renee K.
Weiskopf have received the required number of votes and are hereby elected directors of the company. The report of the Inspector of Election also indicates that the resolution for fiscal year ending December 31, 2019, has received the required number of votes and has been adopted. The resolution for the approval of an advisor on an advisory basis, the compensation of certain of our executive officers has received the required number of votes and has been adopted. The resolution for the consideration of the shareholder proposal reported related to diversity reporting has not received the required number of votes and has not been approved. All ballots and a record of all the proxies will be filed with the books and records of the company.
The certificate of the Inspector of Elections will be attached to the minutes of the meeting. Now I'd like to announce the prize winners, Lila Salway and Jerry Majeski. On your way out, the prizes should be right over by the table where you signed up for the prize. And you get a nice Milwaukee power tool. They work great.
Believe me, I have a bunch of them. I will now entertain a motion for adjournment.
My name is Michael Kirschner. I'm a shareholder of the company and I move that the meeting be adjourned.
Excuse me. And a second. But we don't need a second, do we? But it says here, okay, my notes are off. Okay, we don't.
We'll go with it. It has been moved that the meeting adjourned. All those in favor say aye. Those opposed, Nay. Meeting is completed.
Now, after that, remember the technology center I believe you go right down this, and there's a lunch being served. So everybody that would like to stay for lunch, there's a lunch being served right back here. Technology center will be over open for several hours this afternoon. It's in the old liquor store. Oh, it's in the old Ocano liquor store.
Dan seems to know that too.