Russ Howell’s path to owning Moonlight Services Indiana started long before he opened a shop in Greentown.
Born in Kokomo and raised on the East Side of Indianapolis, Howell comes from a family with generations of ties to the Kokomo and Greentown area. After high school, he decided he was not ready for college and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force.
Howell spent six years on active duty as an aircraft armament specialist, loading conventional and nuclear weapons onto fighter aircraft. Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, he deployed to Kuwait in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
When his active duty service ended, Howell returned to Indiana without an obvious civilian career waiting for him.
“I came back to Indianapolis and realized that I wasn’t really qualified to do anything with my military experience,” Howell says.
He joined the Air Force Reserve at Grissom Air Reserve Base and retrained in wing safety, spending another three years in the military. That experience eventually led to a civilian career in construction safety. Howell worked for OSHA and later for construction companies and consulting firms.
The idea for Moonlight Services developed alongside that career.
In 2003, Howell bought a CNC plasma table, a piece of equipment used to cut metal. At first, it was a hobby and a way to make some extra money. As jobs started coming in, many of the finished pieces needed to be painted, but there was one problem.
“I absolutely hate to paint,” Howell says, laughing.
Looking for another way to finish the metal, Howell began learning about powder coating. He purchased equipment and started taking on projects while continuing his regular career. What began on the side gradually became something much larger.
“I bought some stuff to start powder coating and just kind of dipped my toes into it, and it took off,” Howell says. “It started off as kind of a side hustle, and it’s grown into a full-time business now.”
Today, Moonlight Services operates in Greentown as a custom powder coating and sandblasting shop serving commercial customers and individuals. Howell no longer offers plasma cutting services, choosing instead to focus on the work that became the strongest part of the business.
Every item Howell powder coats is first sandblasted. The process removes rust, old finishes and other material that could interfere with the coating. It also prepares the metal surface so the powder can properly adhere.
The shop’s sandblasting room measures 8 feet wide, 8 feet tall and 20 feet long. Its powder coating oven is 6 feet tall, 4.5 feet wide and 11 feet long, giving Howell room to handle small individual pieces, medium-sized projects and batch work.
His customers are just as varied as the projects. Howell works with metal fabricators who rely on Moonlight Services for their powder coating needs, while individuals bring in one-of-a-kind pieces.
He has worked on motorcycle and four-wheeler parts, sprint car and racing lawn mower chassis, farm equipment and other custom pieces. Some customers want a new finish. Others bring in something worn with years of use that they would rather restore than replace.
Recently, a customer brought Howell an antique metal bed frame that had belonged to a great-great-aunt and had been passed down through the family. Its age showed when it arrived at the shop. Howell sandblasted the frame down to bare metal and applied a new finish while preserving the character of the original piece.
“I don’t want to say it looked completely brand new,” Howell says. “It still retained the old character, the old look that it had to it, but it had a new finish on it that was going to last another 30 years, 40 years.”
Those are the projects Howell especially enjoys. They give him a chance to hear the history behind an object before getting to work on it.
Running the company full time has required more than Howell expected when he first became a business owner. He is currently the only person working in the shop, which means the person answering the phone is the same person preparing, coating and finishing each customer’s project.
For Howell, that direct relationship is an important part of how he wants to run the company.
“One of the things that sets us apart from our competitors is that when you call, you are talking to the owner of the company and the one that’s doing all of the work,” Howell says. “You’re not getting an automated system. You’re not getting somebody that is just giving you a quote. You’re talking to the owner and the one that does all the work.”
Quick turnaround remains a priority, but Howell says much of what he enjoys about the business is the variety. One day might bring a fabricator’s production run and the next a motorcycle part, farm equipment or an old family piece someone wants to preserve.
“I love what I do,” Howell says. “It’s different every single day, and I get to hear cool stories.”
After years in the military and construction safety, Howell has found work that suits him. He runs the shop himself, knows every project that comes through the door and remains the person customers talk to from the first phone call to the finished job.
For more information about Moonlight Services and its custom powder coating and sandblasting services, call (765) 860-3024, email Russ@moonlightservicesin.com or visit moonlightservicesin.com.
