Toll processing has never been the most glamorous part of the metals industry. Processors don't make steel; they don't buy steel; they don't own steel. But it's a critical part of the North American metal supply chain, and right now it's suffering badly.

As AMM's Chicago-based correspondent, Corinna Petry, discovers in this month's cover feature (page 28), the sector is in a uniquely vulnerable position: stuck between the catastrophic decline in the sectors that make up their traditional customer base—auto, construction...