INDUSTRY NEWS
Continued from page 31
Brandon Weese (Production Supervisor), Garrett
Weese (Quality Control), Todd Jenkins (Engi-
neering), Shane Lee, Lindsay Lee (Accounting),
Tamara Helderman (Human Resources).
From age 10, so was I.” He and cousins
earned $3 an hour sweeping the shop.
Over time, their responsibilities grew as
they learned to weld and work on hy-
draulics and engines.
Today, among the company’s 300 em-
ployees, the average tenure is more than
seven years. Half the employees have
been with the company longer than five
years. Among that group, the average
tenure jumps to 13 ½ years.
Lesson 3: Relationships are your most
valuable asset
Throughout the first half of the 1970s,
the Lee family and a handful of non-fam-
ily employees, worked to improve and
expand the company’s product line and
grow the Dealer network. The growing
company established relationships with
Dealers, mainly in the Southeast. As busi-
ness grew, the Dealer network expanded
North and then West.
By the mid-70s revenues were over $1
million and the company had a small
but loyal network of Dealers. Through-
out the 1980s, LeeBoy focused on ex-
panding and improving its equipment
portfolio. Significant changes included
the 1985 introduction of the Series
1000 pavers, which relocated the engine
from beneath the hopper to the rear of
the machine. In 1988, they added mo-
tor graders to the product offering.
By the 1990s, LeeBoy was still very
much a family operation. B.R. was at
the helm, Nelda ran payroll and the
boys all worked in production. It was a
lean operation to say the least. As long
as they could sketch out mechanical
www.callape.com
drawings on a sheet of paper—or with
chalk on a concrete floor, as Brandon
remembers—there was no need for
technology.
Employees punched clocks and payroll
checks were handwritten and recorded
in a ledger book. Today, that mentality
seems counter-intuitive as well as count-
er-productive, but it contributed signifi-
cantly in cementing the independent can-
do attitude that has become a hallmark of
the LeeBoy brand.
and that, according to Christopher Bar-
nard, LeeBoy’s Chief Executive Officer,
is one of the hidden secrets to the com-
pany’s long-term success and something
that VT Systems found so attractive.
“I believe that from the beginning, VT
Systems recognized that the company
and culture the Lee family had built was
Lesson 4: Know your limitations
By 2000, the company was producing
about 15 different models of paving and
road maintenance equipment and sup-
porting Dealers in all 50 US states and
10 Canadian provinces. The business
environment in which it was operating
was quickly evolving as well. Across the
US industrial sector, technology was
radically transforming how companies
design, manufacture, sell and support
their products.
“The way business was done was total-
ly different from what my parents and
grandparents were used to,” according
to Brandon, the first in the family to at-
tend college. By the time he graduated,
B.R., then 67, was thinking it might be
time to turn the business over to some-
one more capable of shepherding it into
the new millennium.
In June 2006, VT Systems (Alexan-
dria, VA.) via its parent company ST
Engineering, purchased B.R. Lee Ind.
The move gave LeeBoy access to signifi-
cantly more resources, access to cutting
edge technologies, and the necessary
capital and business management ex-
perience to continue the company’s
growth.
Today, LeeBoy employs over 300
people. It is one of the top performing
companies within the VT Systems fam-
ily, which includes companies in the
aerospace, land, electronics and marine
industries.
Lesson 5: Refer back to Lesson 1
While LeeBoy is no longer a fami-
ly-owned business, it does feel like one,
[32]
Old Maintainer Shop
working really well,” he said.
The strategy over the next three to
five years will be to build on the com-
pany’s culture of grit and focus on the
commercial paving contractor, while
investing heavily in product and pro-
cess innovation and investment in the
critical and necessary Dealer-customer
relationship.
“B.R. had it
right and you
can’t change that
because that’s the
key to everything
else,”
Barnard
cautioned. Lee-
Boy will always
stay true to its
original
core
values that have
driven and will
continue to drive
its success.
To read the full article, please visit
https://www.leeboy.com/documents/
608/The_LeeBoy_Story.pdf
1.800.210.5923