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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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January 2025 #17306 Page #172
The Last Word Rural Cousins in the Truss Business — The Last Chapter Joe Kannapell, P.E.
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n 1990, when Dickie Vail traveled from his shuttered Virginia plant to his job interview in Burlington, NC, he didn’t have much going for him. He was 35 and broke, and he was meeting Carroll Shoffner, a 57-year-old mega-millionaire who owned over a dozen highly efficient truss plants. Yet, in demeanor, they could have passed for father and son. Their small-town southern mannerisms, and their faith in God, overcame any differences in their attainments. Carroll, who passed away in 2017, may be the least-appreciated truss business entrepreneur, and that was the way he wanted it. The reason he was so secretive was that, shortly after a Dick Rotto visit in the mid-1970s, Carroll “lost” his head engineer, Jim Meade, to Trussway. From then on, Carroll kept Shoffner Industries largely isolated from the rest of the truss industry while he grew his business with militaristic discipline and mainly by promoting from within his ranks. Fortunately for Dickie, Carroll was expanding his footprint beyond the Carolinas, and he saw in Dickie someone who had the tenacity to go from humble beginnings to truss plant ownership, like he had in 1964. He needed a hardworking, driven man to run the uncharacteristically large plant that he had acquired from Ryan Homes in Jefferson, GA. That’s where Dickie found his new home, not drastically different in character from whence he came. Most importantly though, Dickie got his first opportunity to see from the inside how a tightly knit, professional organization ran. Meanwhile, as Larry Rogers saw his delivery charges to Nashville escalate, he realized that he could justify building trusses there. So, he bought an existing building, 30 miles downstream from Nashville on the Cumberland River, and set up his first satellite plant. From this location, he could easily access the increasing number of central-city projects, as well as those around the periphery. His new building offered considerable room for expansion and had a large flat yard for lumber and truss storage. And his timing couldn’t have been better, as the economy was expanding rapidly. Over the next decade, Larry added to his capacity in Nashville and recruited experienced people, while leveraging Derek Moody’s staff in Monroe, LA for training and support. Like most surrounding plants, Rogers Manufacturing Corp. (RMC) was flush with work until the onset of the recession in 2008–2009, when demand for apartment trusses collapsed, nearly as badly as it had in Louisiana for Dickie Vail and him. Then, on May 1, 2010, a record 20-inch rainfall fell on Nashvile, unleashing a torrent of water that flooded the historic Grand Ole Opry, the Gaylord Hotel (site of 1997 BCMC show), and headed for the plant. On Sunday morning, May 2, Jennifer Cummings was one of several RMC associates who were watching their plant from a distance while the flood waters gradually rose up the stairs to the plant office, across the stair landing, up the walls of the office, and into the plant, inundating everything inside. This occurred so rapidly that there was not even time to turn off the power to the plant, or to retrieve any of the job files or business records. Imagine the dismay of these folks as they watched their livelihoods swept away in the Cumberland River. Continued next page
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