LONG FOUNDATION DRILLINGHas Created a Strong

Presence in the Southeastern U.S.

By Peggy Hagerty Duffy, P.E., ADSC Technical Advisor

The following is the third in a series of articles about conti-nuity of family ownership and leadership in ADSC companies.During the next two years we will be reporting on ADSC com-panies with multiple generations of ownership and manage-ment. This article is about the Long family of Nashville,Tennessee and the history of Bob, sons Bruce and Chris witha number of other “players” thrown in. (Editor)

If the story of Long Foun-dation Drilling Companywere made into a movie, thepromo poster would show alarge chunk of limestone witha roller cone rock bit and apair of child size 6 cowboyboots on top. The stars of themovie would be an ensemblecast of veterans, a tightly knitgroup of professionals whomastered their craft together.

The film would be billed as a Howard Hughes Produc-tion, because that is where the story began…

In 1955, in the middle of the Dust Bowl in Purnell,Oklahoma, Bob Long received his honorable dischargefrom the U.S. Air Force, and went looking for work. Hefound a good job at the nearby Hughes Tool Companyselling roller bits and augers to men drilling for oil acrossthe central United States. Howard Hughes Sr. had estab-lished his tool business in the early twentieth centurywith the tri-cone rotary drill bit, which revolutionizedthe oil drilling business. Howard Hughes Jr. diversified

the company inthe 1930s to in-clude a movie pro-duction companyand a fledgling air-craft division. BobLong sold toolsfor Hughes andmade friends atc o m p a n i e sthroughout Okla-homa and Kansas.Bob quickly filled

orders and sent invoices back to the home office. “Theywere real clear about making sure we sent back signedorders right away,” he remembers, “because Mr. Hughesused those orders as proof of sales and collateral for hismovie and airplane businesses.”

Bob met a number of people in his daily business, buthe never made a sale quite as successfully as he did whenhe met a young oildelivery companyrepresentative, JoAnne Koehler.After months of“marketing,” sheagreed to “place along-term order,”and they were mar-ried in 1957. A son,Bruce, came alongin 1958, and Bobstepped up his ef-forts to sell toolsto support hisfamily. In 1960,the Hughes ToolCompany reas-signed Bob to Birmingham, Alabama in order to expandthe company business by marketing to rock quarries,mining operations, and construction companies engagedin drilling and blasting. The family moved to Alabama.Another son, Chris, was born in 1961, and Bob expandedhis customer base.

As Bob sold more tools, he became well-versed indrilling operations and methods. He spent time on sitesthroughout the southeast, sometimes with the family intow. It was on one of these sites that 6-year-old Bruce de-cided to peer over the edge of a steep rock cut. His cu-riosity drew him to lean too far over the edge, and he fell.Fortunately, his cowboy boots got stuck in the rocksalong the top of the slope, and a future President of theADSC was saved from serious injury and possible death.Bruce’s little boots anchored in the rock would prove tobe emblematic of how intertwined with rock the Longfamily future would be.

McDowell Contractors, Inc. was a construction company

Page 38 FOUNDATION DRILLING February/March 2014

Feat

ure

Bob and Jo at an ADSC meeting in 1977.

based in Nashville, Tennessee, and were customers of the HughesTool Company. EC “Buddy” Yokley and Shelby Cook had beenMcDowell employees since 1962, primarily working with explo-sives and removing rock for road projects. Bob called on the menand supplied them with among other tools, 18 inch rotary bits. In1966, McDowell ran into a drilling problem they couldn’t solve

on a job for which Bob was supplying the tools. The drilling ques-tion was easy for Bob to solve. He had slightly more difficulty com-ing up with an answer when the McDowell owners asked if hewould like to come work for them and develop their new founda-tion drilling division. Of course, the answer was “yes.” The Longsmoved to Nashville in 1966 to begin a business using the toolsBob had sold for so long. Shelby and Buddy joined him to createthe McDowell Contractors Foundation Division. Jo also became an

employee early in the evolution of the ven-ture, working in the office and helping withbids. Shelby quickly became one of their fieldsuperintendents. Their office was a tinytrailer in the shadow of the main McDowellbuilding. Often it wasn’t large enough to han-dle the growing volume of work Bob andBuddy were acquiring. Estimating and bid-ding sessions frequently were moved to theLong’s kitchen so that Buddy and Jo couldhave enough room to work. A scan machinewas set up in the Long family room. The busi-ness was so much a part of the family thatBruce and Chris barely remember the soundof the estimates and plans being copied.These were just routine occurrences in theLong household.

The McDowell crew worked hard, butthe real key to their success was their un-

derstanding of the biggest piece of the subsurface landscape inthe southeast – rock. Rock in much of the southeastern United

States is shallow, hard, and full of holes. Those holes are thecause of sinkholes, caves, and other geo technical complications,and to top it off, the nature of the problems varies from one lo-cation to the next. Drilling in these conditions can be challeng-ing at best. Many outside drilling companies had tried tonavigate the “Swiss cheese” under Tennessee and Alabama, onlyto lose money, business, and hope. Bob Long understood drillingtools, and Buddy and Shelby understood the rock. They modi-fied their methods, adapted to new developments in the tool in-dustry, gained new clients, and made money in the process. Ingeneral, they did what it took to learn how to excavate the

FOUNDATION DRILLING February/March 2014 Page 39

(Continued on page 41)

STRONG PRESENCE Contd.

The McDowell crew worked hard, but the real key totheir success was their understanding of the biggest pieceof the subsurface landscape in the southeast – rock.

Bob and his group also constructed foundations for thePeachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, which was thetallest hotel in the world when it was built. Hospitals, office buildings, and manufacturing plants soon becameitems on the McDowell resume.

McDowell crew at the Corvette Plant, Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1971.

Crews in 1971 removing rock by hand. Notice drill rig parked at the rear.

Page 40 FOUNDATION DRILLING February/March 2014

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solutioned (holey) rock that so often baffled other contractors.And, they did what it took to sustain a successful business. Onone occasion, Buddy demanded he be lowered upside down intoa 30 inch diameter hole, secured only by a rope tied around his leg,so he could retrieve an expensive tool that was thought to be lost.(Current OSHA officials don’t recommend this method).

In the beginning commercial work comprised the bulk of Mc-Dowell Contractor’s foundation business. The first major projectinvolved construction of foundations for the Genesco Headquar-ters, a large office building in Nashville. Bob and his group alsoconstructed foundations for the Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta,Georgia, which was the tallest hotel in the world when it was built.Hospitals, office buildings, and manufacturing plants soon becameitems on the McDowell resume.

Rock removal in the early days was done mostly by hand. “Wewould hit rock, then boom down and pull the rigs off so we couldget down the holes and take out the rock,” says Shelby. “It was anice improvement when we got equipment that would take it outfor us.” Indeed. Hundreds of drilled shaft excavations designed forthe new Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1971 cre-ated a need for workers to remove thousands of cubic yards oflimestone. Drilling started in the fall at the end of the local farm-ers’ harvest, so Shelby hired 70 farmers, signed them up with theunion, and sent them down shafts where they spent at least eighthours each day jackhammering. Other jobs included some drillingand shooting with explosives, but even those projects required dif-ficult excavation once the explosives broke up the rock.

Bruce, began working in the company’s shop in 1974 doing oddjobs. He was attending high school at the time. McDowell’s em-ployees were not strangers to him. In addition to the estimatingsessions at the kitchen table and the scan machine in the familyroom, many of the McDowell employees lived in the neighbor-hood and acted as extra sets of parents to Bruce and Chris. Brucerecalls, “One of the superintendents lived right behind us. Wecouldn’t get away with much without someone knowing it.” Hemoved up to work as a laborer during the summers after he en-tered the Business program at the University of Tennessee. By thattime McDowell was doing quite a bit of work at the University.Bruce added some work during the school year by picking upshifts when the company worked on campus. His part-time workprovided a unique educational experience, combining classroombusiness instruction and practical knowledge in the field. He wasready for the business side of construction when he graduated in1981. He went to work full-time at the McDowell office in Birm-ingham, Alabama, a second market for the McDowell FoundationDivision.

Chris, who had worked summers at the shop in the same man-ner Bruce did, went off to the University of Tennessee, where theMcDowell name had become a routine sight. He returned to workat McDowell full-time when he left school. The Long sons werefully integrated into the company. Bruce and Chris both marriedsoon after they began full-time work at McDowell, surprisinglyfinding not one but two women, Jill Ferrell and Libby Osburn,who were enthusiastic about being part of this drilling family.Bruce and Jill spent 13 years in Birmingham before “adequate pro-duction was met,” a granddaughter for Bob and Jo.

In 1985, the McDowell management underwent somechanges after company founder Bob McDowell died. The ensu-ing lack of organization created a climate in which Bob felt itwas time to take full control of the foundation drilling divisionof the company. He consulted with a friend of his, who recom-mended that he talk to Jim Parks (a Past ADSC Director andowner of Parks Drilling in Columbus, Ohio), about partneringon a new company. Parks owned another drilling venture andwas familiar with the industry. He agreed and became a silentpartner in Long Foundation Drilling Company. Bob hired al-most the entire foundation drilling division of McDowell Con-tractors, with the old crew just moving to another office down

the road. The team that had done so well at McDowell didn’tmiss a beat and continued to “rock” under a new name. FredPorter, a former geotechnical engineer, took over the Birminghamoffice, keeping the operation in knowledgeable hands. In 1993Bruce was brought back to work in Long’s Nashville office.

Long Foundation Drilling solidified their role as one of theonly foundation drilling contractors in the southeastern UnitedStates in the 1980s, and reinforced that position throughout the1990s. They constructed foundations for hundreds of structuresthroughout the region, and established such a regional presencethat only a few other foundation drilling companies truly couldclaim any other significant market share in the Tennessee area.Unique projects included a courthouse building in Florida witha cavern under almost the entire footprint, and a 13-foot diam-eter shaft drilled from a barge in a water supply basin formerlyuntouched by any mechanical equipment.

Jo Long who had played a key role in the early days of thecompany passed away in November 2001. She was sorelymissed as a wife, Mom, and staunch supporter of Long’s rise toprominence in the drilled foundation industry.

Highway work has become a staple for Long in recent years,as Department of Transportation engineers have become morecomfortable with drilled shaft foundations as solutions for car-rying foundation loads in areas with “holey” rock. Bruce cred-

FOUNDATION DRILLING February/March 2014 Page 41

(Continued on page 42)

The team that had done so well at McDowell didn’t miss abeat and continued to “rock” under a new name.

STRONG PRESENCE Contd.

Chris, Jo and Bob in late 1988 at Long’s Nashville office.

Page 42 FOUNDATION DRILLING February/March 2014

its the ADSC for much of this progress. “Before the ADSC got in-volved,” he says, “drilled shafts were rarely specified for high-way jobs in our area. It’s a real credit to the Association that theywere so proactive in educating highway department engineers.”

Bruce did his own part for the industry, serving as the ADSCPresident from 1996 to 1998 and fulfilling several terms on theBoard of Directors, thus following in Bob’s footsteps as he also

served as President of the Asso-ciation from 1976 to 1977.

In 2011, Long began workingon one of the largest drilledshaft projects in the United to

States to date. This was at a semiconductor plant in Clarksville,Tennessee. Over twenty drill rigs were operating at one point

during foundation construction. Long had the largest presenceof the four contractors who worked on the job. This projectstands as one of Long Foundation Drilling’s greatest, largest,and most successful achievements.

Another important person in the company and family’s suc-

cess is Carole Scallorn, now Long. Carole went to work at LongFoundation in 1985. Starting in the accounting department she

eventually rose to the position of company Secretary/Treasurer.Carole and Bob Long married in 2004. She retired in 2006.

The ensemble cast who started this “film production” stillworks together to install foundations all over the southeast.Buddy has retired, Shelby is still Vice President of Operations,and Bob is still a part-time presence in the office. Many of themain members of the staff have been on board for many years.Bruce estimates that 90% of the firm’s current 100 employees

have been with the company for at least ten years. Bruce is thecompany President and Chris is the Vice President. They havedistinct responsibilities at the company, but as you would ex-pect, work closely on all important matters. Their personalitiesare somewhat different, but share a very well-developed sense of

humor, the Long Work Ethic, and a taste forgood food and wine. An annual Christmas lunchbrings back employees and customers from theMcDowell days and from the early Long era, aswell as employees and relatives from the currentthriving business.

Bob and Shelby say the biggest difference inwork over the years is a result of developmentsin equipment. “Taking out rock is all about thetools,” Bob reflects. “It’s a totally different worldnow than when we started.” Shelby agrees, andadds, “Heck, in the beginning when we blastedyou got separation by having your blasting caps inone pocket and your dynamite in the other. Youcould say it’s a little bit safer now.”

Among their other accomplishments, LongFoundation Drilling is home to one of the neatest,most well-organized equipment yards in the coun-

Bruce did his own part forthe industry, serving as theADSC President from 1996to 1998 and fulfilling severalterms on the Board of Directors, thus following in Bob’s footsteps as he alsoserved as President of the Association from 1976 to1977.

(Continued on page 45)

Over twenty drill rigs were operating at one point duringfoundation construction. Long had the largest presence ofthe four contractors who worked on the job. This projectstands as one of Long Foundation Drilling’s greatest largestand most successful achievements.

STRONG PRESENCE Contd.

Bruce credits the ADSC for much of this progress. “Beforethe ADSC got involved,” he says, “drilled shafts wererarely specified for highway jobs in our area. It’s a realcredit to the Association that they were so proactive in educating highway department engineers.”

Bob andCarole at

home.

Bruce Long, ADSC President in1996.

Bruce Long, Jason Crawford, Shelby Cook, Bob Long and Fred Porter at an ADSC EquipmentShow.

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try. Drill rigs, augers, core barrels and more are laid out in neatrows. Company policy obviously includes a conscientious respectfor the tools of the trade. Perhaps this is the most fitting represen-tation of why Long has been so successful. They value the equip-ment, because the tools, along with the people, are the heart ofthis story.

Epilogue

Bruce Long has personally been instrumental in the pro-motion of the use of drilled shaft foundations in the trans-portation industry throughout the southeastern United States.His tireless efforts in meeting with, and providing educationalopportunities for southeastern state DOT engineers serves asa model for what can be achieved. The company has been akey supporter of the ADSC’s Civil Engineering Faculty Work-shop conducted in the southeast. They have contributed equip-

ment and manpower to just about everytechnical program, research project, and in-dustry advancement effort in that part ofthe country and beyond. ADSC Past Presi-dent Bruce Long is a Trustee of the ADSC’sIndustry Advancement Fund. His, and LongFoundation Drilling’s involvement in in-dustry advancement activities begun by Bobwhen he served as ADSC President, contin-ues on as strong as ever. Nowadays Bob canbe found working on his farm, teaching thegrandkids about a whole slew of life les-sons, and making sure that “things are run-ning smoothly” at Long FoundationDrilling. (Editor)

STRONG PRESENCE Contd.

Long Foundation on North Carolina DOT project.

CONRAC project at Nashville Airport 2011.

Laurens County South Carolina project.

The Long Family today.