(Binder Spotlights) PDF File - J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, Inc.

SPOTLIGHTS SPOTLIGHTS
J. FLETCHER CREAMER & SON, INC.
Diversified national contractor maintains
family feel throughout 77-year history
J. Fletcher Creamer, Jr. is
president of J. Fletcher
Creamer & Son, Inc.
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The distinctive Creamer
logo is found on every
piece of Creamer
equipment and is
proudly displayed
throughout the company.
Even though J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, Inc.
employs over 1,000 people, has offices in four states,
and can handle anything from digging a residential
swimming pool to building complicated highway and
bridge projects, the diversified contractor maintains its
family feel.
“With a lot of our foremen, the first job they ever
had was working here,” said J. Fletcher “Fletch”
Creamer, Jr., president of the Hackensackheadquartered
company. “They’re probably in their
40s now, but they’ve been here since they were 18
years old. So it is a family, a large family.”
The family feel is strengthened by the fact that
sons have followed their fathers to work at J. Fletcher
Creamer & Son, Inc. “We have company picnics, and
we see the kids growing up year after year,” smiled
Fletch, Jr. “Some of them come to work for us, and I
tell them, ‘I remember you when you were about this
big.’ It’s been fun.
“And even though we’ve grown a lot since I
became president in 1982, the door’s always open,”
he added. “I used to know every employee by their
first name, but I can’t say that anymore — my
memory isn’t that good.”
But if Fletch, Jr. doesn’t know an employee’s
name, one of his brothers might. Glenn Creamer is
executive vice president of the firm. Dale Creamer is
vice president. Their father, J. Fletcher Creamer, Sr.,
is chairman.
Under their father’s tutelage, all three brothers
started in the field and worked their way up, noted
Fletch, Jr. “We were laborers, operators, in the office
purchasing,” he remembered. “I was an estimator for
seven years. My brothers did the same or similar
things.”
Assisting the Creamers in managing their company
are Vice President of Operations George Kreis, Vice
President of Heavy Construction Brad Jorrey, Vice
President of Utilities Joe Walsh and Vice President of
Engineering John Dal Pizzol.
As their father welcomed them into the family
business, the brothers have also welcomed the next
generation. “My son, J. Fletcher Creamer V, works with
our property development and real estate division,”
noted Fletch, Jr. “And Glenn’s daughter, Allison
Creamer, heads up our human resources department.”
Proud history
J. Fletcher Creamer & Son was founded in 1923 in
Fort Lee by the Creamer brothers’ great grandfather
— the first J. Fletcher Creamer. “He started out in the
coal business delivering coal and fuel oil and
expanded into the construction business through
trucking,” said Fletch, Jr. One of the firm’s first
construction trucking jobs involved hauling rock and fill
during the building of the George Washington Bridge.
J. Fletcher Creamer & Son’s construction trucking
business continued to grow, and the company
ventured into more construction work. “We started in
basically small residential building,” said Fletch, Jr.
“We did blasting, which we still do today, for home
foundations, and digging out homes, then we
became involved in street and road improvements
and pipe and sewer work.”
The company sold its fuel oil business in 1963 and
began concentrating on pipeline installation for local
utility companies.
“Today the utility work is still a major part of what
we do, as are the bigger road projects we’ve grown
into,” noted Fletch, Jr. J. Fletcher Creamer & Son,
Inc., also operates a guide rail and overhead sign
structures division and a pipe-cleaning and mortarlining
service that spurred the company to establish
an office in Los Angeles 13 years ago.
Pipe cleaning and lining
Creamer’s pipe-cleaning and lining service uses
sophisticated, specialized equipment to scrape
mineral accumulations from old cast iron or steel
water pipes. Then the inside of each pipe is sprayed
with a cement lining that prevents future

accumulations, called tuberculation, in the pipe. The
work is done without removing the pipe from the
ground and without interruption of water service.
“When we first got into cleaning and lining, you had
to run bypass pipe up on top of the ground,” explained
Fletch, Jr. “In the Northeast it would freeze in the
winter, so we were limited to three seasons. We had all
the equipment and all the people, so we decided to go
out to California and work there in the winter and come
back here the rest of the year.
“It seemed like a great idea,” he laughed. “Then we
got our first job in California and they postponed the
start date, so we couldn’t do it in the winter. Because
Los Angeles has a huge water and power program,
we decided to just set up shop. We are considered a
local contractor there now.”
The cleaning and lining service has also completed
major projects in New Jersey, Connecticut, Georgia
and Maryland and smaller projects in many other
states. Creamer crews can claim the rehabilitation of
more than two million linear feet of 4- to 60-inchdiameter
cast iron and steel water mains on
numerous jobs for Los Angeles Power and Water
alone.
The operator of a
Komatsu PC128UU
zero-tail-swing
excavator spreads fill
on a road-building
and underground
utility project on
Routes 4 and 17.
The operator of a
Komatsu PC270LC-6
excavator hoists and
places a large
concrete pipe on
J. Fletcher Creamer &
Sonʼs underground
utility project on
Routes 4 and 17.
Continued . . .
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Business grows through diversification
. . . continued
J. Fletcher Creamer V
helps manage a
property-development
division of J. Fletcher
Creamer & Son, Inc.
Part of J. Fletcher
Creamer & Son's skilled
work force of over 1,000
employees nationwide
includes (from left)
Assistant Field
Operations Manager Dan
Rivera, administrative
assistant Ambria Kunzel,
Service Center Manager
Richard Dargel,
administrative assistant
Michelle Rulo and
Equipment Coordinator
Frank Pietropallo.
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Veteran shop foreman
Rich Scalese guides a
group of 25 mechanics
and welders at the
company's 12-bay
Hackensack
service center.
In top 200
Today, J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, Inc. is ranked
as one of the top 200 contractors in the United States
by Engineering News-Record and works nationwide.
“Our main office is right here in Hackensack,” said
Fletch, Jr. “We run all of our utility work out of our
office in Linden, New Jersey. We do our guide rails
and overhead sign structures out of Folsom, New
Jersey. We have offices near Washington D.C. and
Atlanta. Then we’re on the West Coast in Los
Angeles and the Oakland, California, area. To date
the company has worked in 32 states.”
The company even started its own environmental
division, Creamer Environmental, Inc., five years ago,
which also has its offices in Hackensack. About 40
percent of J. Fletcher Creamer & Son’s work is
public. The firm is a union contractor.
“I believe we’re the most diversified contractor in
the entire Northeast as far as the types of work we’ll
do,” commented Fletch, Jr. “We do heavy
construction, highways, roads and bridges. We do
our own pile-driving and steel-sheeting work.
“And we still do small work — blasting for swimming
pools and houses,” he continued. “We haven’t let that
go. And like I said earlier, we do the traditional utility
work — water, some sewer, telephone, gas, electric,
substations. We’ve done a tremendous amount of
fiber-optic work over the last four years.”
Miles of fiber optics
J. Fletcher Creamer crews have installed hundreds
of miles of fiber-optic cable since they pioneered the
field 20 years ago. “We’ve done some major jobs in
California, fiber work up in the Tehachapi Mountains,”
said Fletch, Jr. “We did a job in Tennessee last year,
130 miles from Chattanooga to Nashville, all rock.
We just finished a job in Vail, Colorado, through
Glenwood Canyon. It was just 13 miles along the
Colorado River, but it is a pretty sensitive area.
“It was a tough job,” he commented. “We dug off of
trailers and finished up ahead of schedule. We
received a letter from the Colorado DOT, which was
probably the best commendation letter I’ve read in
my life. They said we were the best contractor
Colorado has ever seen.”
J. Fletcher Creamer & Son took advantage of the
recent telecommunications boom. “Four years ago
we did about $16 million in fiber optics,” he explained.
“Then we went to $43 million and to $60 million — we
were almost up to $100 million in fiber-optic work. We
took advantage of the market. Right now that market
has tailed off, but we haven’t laid off a soul.”
Unbelievable job, schedule
On the highway side, one of the company’s most
memorable projects was a joint venture with Joseph
M. Sanzari, Inc., of North Bergen, New Jersey, and
Gardner M. Bishop of White Plains, New York. The
three companies submitted the low bid to rebuild the
interchange at the intersection of State Highways 4
and 17 in Paramus, New Jersey, in 1998-99. “It was
one of the most publicized jobs in this area, if not the
whole country, just because of what we did to the
schedule,” said Fletch, Jr. “It was a 30-month project.
The state offered an incentive if we could do it in 24
months.
“We re-staged and re-planned the job and went
back to the state for an additional incentive because
of the overtime we put in on it,” he explained. “We
wound up, bottom line, finishing in 13 months — 17
months ahead of schedule. It’s still unbelievable. We
even made the cover of Engineering News-Record.”
The companies received a major bonus for
completing the project ahead of schedule.

Dealer service vital
J. Fletcher Creamer & Son demands productive
equipment and a high level of dealer service to meet
intensive schedules like that of the Route 4 and 17
project. The company has turned to tough Komatsu
equipment from Binder Machinery Company. The
Creamer fleet includes more than 30 Komatsu
hydraulic excavators, including PC35R-8s, PC95-1s,
PC128UU-1s, PC228USLCs, PC220LC-6s,
PC300LC-6s and PC400HD-6s, and Komatsu
WA380 and WA420 wheel loaders.
Creamer has also purchased numerous Ingersoll-
Rand compactors and fork lifts from Binder. Binder
North Jersey Field Sales Manager Kirk Chagon
services the Creamer account.
“The product is a good product,” commented
Fletch, Jr., “but more important than that is the service
Binder provides. It’s the best in the industry right now.”
Whether needing new or rental equipment or parts
and service support, Fletch, Jr. knows Binder will
service his company’s needs. “The relationship that
our two companies have built is important,” he
emphasized. “A lot of what we do in this business is
building relationships. When there’s a problem, we
can call Kirk and things get done.”
Industry relationships
Another area in which relationships are important
to J. Fletcher Creamer & Son is the company’s
involvement in industry organizations, especially the
Utility and Transportation Contractors Association
(UTCA) and the National Utility Contractors
Association (NUCA).
Fletch, Jr. currently serves as vice president for
NUCA’s Northeast region, and he has been involved
with UTCA since 1987. Fletch, Jr. and his father,
Creamer, Sr., are the only father-and-son pair to ever
win UTCA’s top honor, the prestigious William
Feather, Jr. Memorial Award.
Fletch, Jr. was UTCA president in 1997 when the
association inducted his father into the New Jersey
Construction Industry Hall of Fame. “One of my last
duties was to present my father with the award,” he
recalled. “That was probably the easiest speech I
ever made, no notes, no nothing. It was right from the
heart.”
Good times now
J. Fletcher Creamer, Jr. is optimistic about the
future of his family’s 77-year-old company. “We’re in
a great time right now,” he stated. “Business is good.
I’ve been around long enough to know that this is a
cyclical business, and there’s probably going to be a
downturn or two before my turn is up here. It’s just a
matter of finding out when it’s going to be. I think we’ll
be in pretty good shape for the next five years.”
With two children already in the business, Fletch,
Jr., and his brothers are training the next generation to
carry on the work of J. Fletcher Creamer & Son, Inc.
“My younger brother’s wife is expecting twins, so that
will make 10 grandkids,” smiled Fletch, Jr. “My son is
the oldest at 26, the youngest is 2 1/2, and then we
have two on the way. There’s a big gap between
them, so it will be interesting.”
Crews from J. Fletcher
Creamer & Son, Inc. have
expertise in numerous
construction applications,
including pile-driving work.
Kirk Chagnon of Binder
(right) visits with Fletch
Creamer, Jr. at the
contractorʼs headquarters in
Hackensack. The company
has turned to Binder for
much of its equipment needs
over the years, including a
large fleet of Komatsu and
Ingersoll-Rand equipment.
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