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From left, Cole, Wes, and Lane Reeder.
Sharing the same last name as the company’s founder, Lane Reeder says there wasn’t a moment of free time that didn’t involve an honest day’s work.
If there was a hammer to be swung, a ditch to dig, or a broom to push, “we were doing it,” says Reeder of himself and his brother Cole.
That’s the life of family in a family business.
Today, the brothers are running the family business — Reeder General Contractors.
The company announced this spring that it had entered a new chapter. The company founded by Wes Reeder is now in the hands of his sons, CEO Lane and Cole Reeder, the president.
“Everybody asks, ‘Well, what does it feel like being the owner?’ I tell them: It feels the same except now I've got a big ol’ promissory note,” Lane Reeder jokes — sort of.
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Cole, left, and Lane Reeder on signing day.
The process of ownership transition actually began with an initial discussion in 2016, but the evolution of Reeder as we know it today traces back 15 years.
Reeder Construction has made a name for itself mostly for its work in K-12 public education, but the company also does private real estate development, and large-scale commercial projects.
Coincidentally, when Wes Reeder, a carpenter, founded the company in 1994 from Weatherford, he was counseled specifically to stay away from schools.
“He decided to start his own business,” Lane says. “He ran around trying to figure out how to do the general contracting thing. And he had a couple of different guys tell him that he needed to get on The Blue Book and start bidding public work, but whatever you do, don't bid schools. ‘Stay away from the schools. One of the hardest things to do.’
“So, what does Wes do? He starts bidding schools. And we've worked in schools ever since. That's 95% of what we do.”
Reeder’s most recent notable work in the Fort Worth ISD was the new administration building on Camp Bowie. Since the first bond program in the early 2000s, Lane Reeder says, the company has worked on more than 60 campuses in Fort Worth. The company is currently doing work at Rosemont Middle School and Monnig Middle School. Reeder also recently completed Brock Middle School.
“Dad was a one man show for a really, really long time,” Lane says. “He would be in the office; Mom would go run bids in. He’d have a superintendent or two if he was doing one or two jobs a year. But he was the PIM, he was the super, he was everything that there was.”
Lane picked up his involvement while in college studying architecture. One of the first things he learned studying architecture was that he didn’t want to be an architect. He shoved all his classes to Tuesday and Thursday, and worked for the family business Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.
“I really learned a valuable lesson through school and working to the value that I felt like I could bring both to the company and the industry,” Lane says.
Fast forward about four years, rather than sell the company, which was on the table, the family, with Cole also on board by this time, decided to bet on its future.
“In 2010, we had a vision to grow the company,” Lane says. “That's the first year we started doing strategic planning as an organization.”
The company partnered with a consultant with the objective of growing the company from $5 million a year in revenue to $50 million annually in five years. It was an ambitious goal.
That objective, however, Lane says, gave him a clear target: to build a structure and system, processes, procedures, and a team capable of sustaining that kind of scale.
“Our consultant, his name is Larry Silver, he said, ‘Guys, if you keep the path and you keep implementing strategic planning and doing the tools and the lessons that we're working on this year, one day you'll be doing a $50 million job.
“The three of us [Wes, Lane, and Cole] were, like, ‘This guy’s crazy. There’s no way we’ll ever do a $50 million job.’”
Larry Silver was crazy right. Reeder reached its $50 million annual goal. Today, the company has grown from Wes, Lane, a superintendent, and an administrative assistant to 65 employees and $375 million in projects currently in the pipeline.
The ownership transition officially took effect on Dec. 1, but the beginning of Reeder Construction’s next 30 years of growth and innovation began long before that.
“This decision was about legacy and continuity,” says Wes Reeder, who has transitioned into the position of executive chairman. “We considered several ownership models, including an ESOP, but ultimately, keeping Reeder privately owned by family ensures we can continue to serve our employees, clients, and community with the same values we built this company on.”