Q&A: Spates Construction builds up the North Country

Vermont Business Magazine, Sep 01, 2002

Spates Construction, Inc. is a family run business headquartered in Derby Line.

Just a mile or so below the Canadian border. In business now for over a quarter century, the founders, Frank and Jeannette Spates, have recently retired. The business is now run by their sons Grant, Dana and Lee.

Grant Spates became president of the company in 2001, and continues overseeing the company yearly goals, negotiates contracts, does the vast majority of the job estimating, and tracks and analyzes all quotes.

Grant is a 1975 graduate of North Country High School in Newport, where he was the top vocational student. In addition to running the construction company, he also owns and operates Spates Maple Orchard in Derby, a 3,500 tap maple syrup production and mail order company he started the year he graduated high school. He was married in 1977, and his wife Jeanne is an elementary school teacher.

Grant hunts, fishes, and ski's - both downhill and on water. He serves on the North Country Union Junior High School Board and chairs the Union High School board of directors.

Robert Smith interviewed Grant at company headquarters, which are attached to Frank Spates house in Derby Line, on August 8, 2002.

VBM: Can you give me a little background on your company?

Spates: The company was formed in 1974. My Dad had gone to work for A Joyal Inc, a commercial contractor. He worked for him for a year or so, with the intention that Joyal would retire and sell the business to my father.

VBM: Was that up here?

Spates: Yeah, here in Derby Line. My dad's background is that he went to UVM. He was an engineer. Worked for Shell Oil Company for a while, then worked for the state of Vermont, then went back to work for Shell from 1963-70 down in Connecticut, then came back here in 1970.

VBM: One of your brothers was born

Spates: Yeah. My brother Lee was born in Connecticut in 1964. I have fun with that. I say Grant and Lee, and or course Lee had to have been born south of where I was. And of course we kid him a little about being a flatlander.

So we came back here in 1970. Dad purchased this place, which we put back together and ran as an active dairy farm. Then he got back into construction, working as a project engineer with Wright and Morrissey when they did the hospital in Newport in 1973 or 74, then he went to work for A Joyal and we started the company.

I graduated in 1975. Wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I'd taken some ag courses in high school, some drafting, and was torn between making this a bigger dairy operation or jumping into my father's construction operation. I'd worked a couple of summers in high school with the crews and I enjoyed it, so that was the avenue I decided to pursue. It was kind of exciting, just starting a new company.

VBM: So you've really been with the company from the time it started?

Spates: Yes.

VBM: And you and your brothers are how old?

Spates: I'm 45, Dana is 40 and Lee must be 38, and I've got an older sister. She works for Immigration down in Tennessee now.

We started out as a small commercial company. We'd do some residential work, but it was primarily commercial.

VBM: Do you do any residential now?

Spates: Yeah, we'll do some residential still. This week I priced a house, and I've got another one to price. But I can't compete with the small contractor with a pickup truck with saw horses and a table saw in the back. We've just got way too much overhead for that. If it's a big enough house we can take a look at it.

VBM: My son is starting a small contracting business like that, and I did it for several years.

Spates: Yeah, it's a good business. I think the housing market is staying good because of the low interest rates. When we got out of high school we all worked out on the jobs and then started running jobs. When we needed to expand my father pulled me in and started teaching me estimating. I'd had drafting at the high school, so I started doing the drafting and estimating, and when we got a big project I'd go out and run that until I came back in and we bid something else.

As my father started getting closer to retirement, we brought Oscar Thayer on board as project manager. My mother used to be the company secretary, and she retired earlier, so we brought people into the office to do what she had been doing. My brothers are both superintendents out on the job. Dana is the vice president and Lee is the secretary of the corporation.

VBM: Did you incorporate when your dad was still running the company?

Spates: Yes. It had been incorporated since he bought it. He went A Joyal Inc d/b/a Spates Construction for a few years, because he wanted to keep the Joyal name for a while. It was a good name with a good reputation in the area for commercial work. Then he incorporated as Spates Construction.

VBM: How much have you grown the business over the years? You run some pretty good sized crews.

Spates: I think that when my dad first started there were probably five or six guys with us, and now we've gotten up to some years where we have 30 or 40 on the crews. We have a core of 13 of us, which isn't bad. Besides my brothers, I have four other superintendents that pretty much run the jobs. And they're all diversified enough so that if the economy is down and you can't find six big jobs for six different supers, they can all work on one of the other super's jobs putting up a building.