Around 1950, Max Dickman (1919-1986) and Oscar Seidenberg (1915-1989), founded scrap yard Columbia Steel and Metal Co. with help from experienced businessman Nathan Addlestone (1913-2001). In the mid-1970s, after over twenty years at 216 Assembly Street, the business relocated to 1148 Shop Road. Following Seidenberg’s death in 1989, Jewish businessman Robert Allen Levy (1950-2010) took over the business, which he sold to Progress Rail Services in 1998.
The son of Russian immigrants Morris Dickman (died 1965) and Sadie Puchovitsky Dickman (1986-1953), Max Dickman was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He attended The Casey Jones School of Aeronautics (now known as the Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology) in New York, where he trained as an airplane mechanic. Prior to World War II, he worked as a civilian airplane inspector, first in Ohio and then in Sumter, South Carolina. After he served in England during the World War II, Dickman returned to New Jersey where he opened a small bakery. In 1947, he married Selma Edyth Blick (1914-2015). Two years later, the couple moved to Sumter, South Carolina, where Max went to work with Nathan Addlestone (1913-2001) in the scrap metal business.
The son of Russian immigrants Samuel Seidenberg and Mary Gordon Seidenberg, Oscar Seidenberg was born in Trenton, New Jersey. In the 1920s, the Seidenbergs moved to Joliet, Illinois, where Samuel worked as a peddler. Oscar remained in Joliet until at least 1935. By 1940, however, he had moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where he worked as a wholesale liquor salesman. He got his start in the scrap metal business by working with the Katz brothers, who owned scrapyards in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina.