Southern Industrial Constructors employs over 750 skilled project managers, field superintendents, craftsmen, equipment operators, estimators, engineers, administrators, and safety professionals, and has performed jobs ranging in size from $500 to $40 million. Southern Industrial is a one-stop shop for turnkey industrial construction, industrial electrical construction, electrical panel shop fabrication, specialized metal fabrication, industrial plant maintenance, and turnkey crane & rigging services. Southern Industrial performs small, medium and large mechanical and electrical projects at process and manufacturing facilities all over the Eastern half of the United States. In addition, Southern Industrial’s Rigging Division performs small day rigging jobs to entire plant relocations, often moving entire companies from one state to another, or simply moving big pieces of manufacturing equipment from one side of a plant to the other side, or just across an aisle.
It all started in 1962. Earl Johnson Jr. was hard at work in the family insurance business that bore his father's name. But he was restless with his "white collar" desk job. He was much more interested in construction, machinery and "real work". One day, he received a phone call from a customer who, aware of Johnson's knowledge of machinery, asked him if he knew where he could rent a crane. Johnson called around and discovered there were none available for rent in North Carolina. Johnson saw an opportunity, and "thirty days later, Carolina Crane was born."
"My first job was in Wilson, at an asphalt plant. On my way home, I passed a Ralston Purina plant on the highway, and a man ran out in the street and literally flagged me down. He rented my crane for a month." Pretty soon, Johnson had more cranes, and they were busy all the time
"We started strictly as a crane rental service," he says. "The times were very different then. North Carolina was growing, and we were in the right place at the right time. I had the only cranes available east of Raleigh. By the early 1970s, we were getting into all sorts of contracting, rigging and heavy lifting in industrial plants all over the Southeast."
It was during this time, as construction needs were erupting and industry sought out experienced contractors, that Southern Industrial Constructors was formed as the umbrella name for all the services the company was now offering. By 1982, the company had diversified in many ways. Services included turnkey industrial construction, industrial electrical construction, industrial maintenance, fabrication, heavy rigging, heavy hauling, cranes and more.
While Southern Industrial and the construction industry have undergone many changes the most important change has been the emergence of safety as our top priority. Southern Industrial has several full time safety professionals, maintains a drug free workplace, and utilizes a full range of risk management and loss control practices that have yielded award winning safety records. John Wilson is completely sincere when he says "We are very serious about our safety record, and we consider the people who work for us as family. We don't compromise anywhere." In fact, Southern Industrial is one of only a few contractors in the State of North Carolina to be recognized as a North Carolina STAR contractor by the NC Department of Labor’s OSHA Division.
As Southern Industrial Constructors looks into this next century, all the people and equipment are in place to keep the momentum going.