Chesapeake’s Owner Cecil Lewis rewards customers with a 10-year guarantee for choosing Red Cedar.
Chesapeake, Va.—There are no barriers to the types of fencing Chesapeake Fence & Awning Co., Inc., located here, can and will build upon request. In fact, make that a chicken coop or make that fence cat-proof and you’ll likely get it because, as company owner Cecil Lewis put it, “If you can draw it, we can build it.”
The standard product though has been fences and awnings since 1964, when the company was formed. The species of choice that Lewis recommends is knot-free Red Cedar, which he said, “has a tendency to stay where you put it, and doesn’t bow like Southern Yellow Pine.” He always rewards customers with a 10-year guarantee for choosing Red Cedar.
Primarily, treated lumber is used for posts because the water table is high in the area. Chesapeake recently installed 1,000 linear feet of wooden guardrail using 8X8 posts and 2X10 Southern Yellow Pine rails at Norfolk International Airport.
The bulk of the loads arriving at the Chesapeake yard are bundles of Western Red Cedar materials. In all, 400,000 board feet in a year.
The 10,000 square-foot facility, including showroom, wood shop, welding shop and adjoining parking lot occupies up to five acres of the total ten acres property and materials storage.
Those trucks traveling from across the country, mainly from Universal Forest Products and Rain Forest Lumber Co., located in Seattle, Washington, likely pass Chesapeake trucks along the beltway on their way to deliver finished product to the greater Hampton roads area, Eastern Shore of Virginia, Northeastern North Carolina, north to Richmond or wherever customers reside. The facility location within a mile in each direction of the main highway’s two interstate ramps is conducive to fulfilling another of Lewis’ mottos: ‘Have trucks, will travel,’ specifically, a fleet of seven flat beds and nine pickup trucks, a mix of Fords and Internationals.
Lewis accepts “whatever work comes along,” wherever fencing needs to stand and in whatever form is appropriate. Chesapeake fencing can be seen along interstate highways, around tennis courts and prisons. Clients are government agencies, residential and commercial. Materials are vinyl to aluminum to wood. Other variations are porch railings, screened in porches and decks, and hand railings with matching porch columns for which Chesapeake core drills the holes. “Many companies pay someone to drill. We do it all,” noted Lewis. The company installs product yet also supplies materials for DIY’s.
The DIY route is well worn by Lewis also, as anyone who starts work at 14 years of age is prone to do. That first job was spray-painting redwood fencing red. “Some boards came in lighter and everything had to be uniform.
“I found a home and stayed,” recalled Lewis, who worked his way up over the years to company president. At one time he had over 50 employees working for him, decreased to 32 and the number of crews tightened almost in half from 15 as the sliding economy dictated.
Chesapeake Fence & Awning Company, based in Chesapeake, Va., has been offering fences and awnings since 1964.
The 10,000 square-foot facility, including showroom, wood shop, welding shop and adjoining parking lot occupies up to five acres of the total ten acres property and materials storage, a large part of the remaining acreage, because Lewis believes, “If we don’t have it, we won’t sell it so we have a large yard with many types of fencing.”
Inside the plant, Lewis has amassed the equipment to build the continuously expanding construction demands that had grown over the years. “If someone wants a Red Cedar board fence with a colonial top, we have a Marcell woodworking machine purchased several years ago, along with radial arm saws, table saws and chain saw, if needed. For assembly, Duo-Fast nail gun and aluminum screw nails attach boards to the 2X4 backer. Railings, iron gates for construction jobs, and many other iron fixtures are constructed in the welding shop.
“We have good machinery and excellent people from the area working it, and most have been here an average of 15 to 20 years,” confirmed Lewis. Vice President Philip Shanker; Commercial Division Russell Hogan; and Salesmen Mike Fitzsimmons and Phil Estes joined the company shortly after Lewis did.
Lewis began staining boards 3 years after the company was founded, which was the same year that the city was formed into its own area. He and partner, Charlie Wynne, bought the company in the early 1980’s. When Wynne retired, his daughter Sharon Shanker took over as secretary/treasurer.
Now the cycle has begun all over. Shanker’s son is working in the yard for the summer for the first time. Lewis’ son, Jacob, who also began working for his dad at age 14, works summers for the family-oriented business. “My family realizes what I went through starting out and what I deal with now, which makes it easier for me.” Lewis includes his wife of 22 years, June, in that partnership because she holds down the fort at home in all aspects.
The bulk of the loads arriving at the Chesapeake yard are bundles of Western Red Cedar materials. In all, 400,000 board feet in a year.
The economy has not weeded out Chesapeake because many of Lewis’ efforts in his brand go over and beyond customer service. For example, he picked up several jobs that had been acquired by companies who got paid for the work not done and then folded. He completed the jobs, start to finish at cost to save the reputation of the industry. “I started in this field, fell in love, it’s been good to me, and I feel in turn I have been good to the fencing industry,” confirmed Lewis, backing up his adage: Do things right all the time.
Chesapeake’s quality materials and labor may not compute to the best price, admitted Lewis, “or we wouldn’t be here. We don’t cut corners.”
As dedicated as Lewis is to his business, he still finds time and resources to donate to worthy causes in the community and elsewhere. Viewers of an Extreme Makeover Home Edition may have noticed Chesapeake Fence in the fleeting credit scroll as a donor of materials. Lewis also donates materials to the last project Boy Scout members need to build to become an Eagle Scout. He attributes his business success to simply having found a job he has enjoyed doing through the years as well as the industry people associated with it.
Contact Chesapeake Fence & Awning Co., Inc., at www.chesapeakefence.com or by phone at (757) 545-8486.
Chesapeake Fence orders 30 truckloads per year of Southern Yellow Pine in various thicknesses (No. 1, 2 and Better, KD, Rough, S4S) along with occasional import boards.
