Wednesday, November 19, 2003
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003 |
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3rd generation joins Walker Concrete on 50th anniversary By J. FRANK LYNCH When Barney Walker first set out to sell concrete in rural Fayette County back in 1953, he did it by driving around in a pickup truck pulling a two-bag cement mixer, stopping whenever he saw somebody moving dirt or digging a hole. He called it “dirt daubing,” said his oldest granddaughter, Jo Ana Walker, who said it remains the best way to build business. That’s exactly what she was doing one day this week, driving around Coweta County in her sales job with the family company, Walker Concrete. Jo Ana, 22, graduated in August from Auburn University with a marketing degree, and came home to become the third generation of the Walker clan to work for the company, which turned 50 years old Nov. 1. Her dad, Doug Walker, is president of Walker Concrete, which recently earned the distinction of being Fayette County’s oldest continually operating business. “Paw-paw always said if you see somebody digging a hole, you should stop and ask if they need any concrete,” Jo Ana explained via cell phone, taking a break driving up and down Ga. Highway 154 in Coweta. “But if they already have a concrete supplier, we don’t try to take their business. We’ll ask if they need anything else, like supplies or building materials.” That gentlemanly approach has always proven successful for Barney Walker, who founded Fayette Concrete after returning home from the Army in 1953, when the county’s population was barely 8,000 people. His first customer was homebuilder Huie Bray, who was trying to convince Atlanta banks that giving mortgages to build houses in Fayette County wasn’t such a hopeless investment. In a day when the bidding process associated with public projects didn’t exist, and when segregation remained the norm, Walker was awarded the job that first year to supply concrete for the new Fayette County Training Center, a complex to house all grades of the county’s black student enrollment. That building would later become Fayette County Junior High, and today is known as East Fayette Elementary. A more recent local project with the Walker stamp is the new Fayette County Judicial Center on Jimmy Mayfield Drive. The big break for Walker came in July 1960, when construction was beginning on Atlanta Motor Speedway in nearby Hampton. “I got a call one day to deliver $50,000 worth of concrete down there,” Barney Walker explains. “Those were pretty lean days for everybody. There just wasn’t much going on and we were financing jobs by floating the invoices with the bank.” “When I got that check, I took it to the bank manager and said, ‘I’ll never borrow against an invoice again,’ and we haven’t,” Walker recalled. “It really helped us learn to operate within our means.” As the company grew and expanded to seven plants spread across six counties, the name was changed to Walker Concrete. Today, it is the largest privately owned concrete supplier on the Southside of Atlanta, doing more than $50 million in sales annually and employing more than 180 workers and 120 trucks. Doug Walker helped guide the company to plants in Conley, Barnesville, Jackson, Jonesboro, Locust Grove and most recently, Palmetto. Walker supplied the concrete to build Clayton College and State University, then known as Clayton Junior College, which named Doug Walker a distinguished alumnus last year. “We’re not the cheapest concrete on the block,” Doug Walker said. “But we don’t want to be the cheapest on the block.” What customers get in return, said Barney Walker, is quality — and a certain degree of trust. “We’ve never been sued,” said the senior Walker. “That’s a pretty good record for somebody to have.” Though it’s a messy business (the company has to account for every drop of runoff and recycles concrete waste matter using an original process called “Barney Run”), Jo Ana said she is committed to learning the ropes from the bottom up. She’s been promoted to sales, which suits her fine, said the 1999 graduate of Fayette County High, next door to the company’s main plant in the heart of Fayetteville. Her grandfather graduated from FCHS in 1949, and her father graduated in 1971. Driving is another matter. “I’ve driven a truck around the yard, but that’s it,” she said. “The drivers are the backbone of this company. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the drivers and what they do.” Jo Ana, the oldest of four daughters to Doug and Debbie Walker, said there was never any doubt about coming home one day to work for the company, though there was no pressure to do so. While she has cousins who’ve worked occasionally in the business, none of the Walker grandkids have shown as serious an interest in concrete as Jo Ana. The long hours — business starts before sun-up and often goes until dark — hasn’t deterred her, but it has meant social activities are limited. And while the pay is OK, she isn’t getting rich, she confesses. She hopes to build a house soon, something reasonable, and move out of the garage apartment at the family’s home on County Line Road. Meantime, Jo Ana said, she’s willing to drive around the countryside stopping to ask strangers digging holes if they need concrete. “You have to earn your worth, pay your dues,” she said.
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