B.R. Kreider &?Son has been providing site contracting services in Pennsylvania for more than 70 years.

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B.R. Kreider & Son Inc. CEO Ken Kreider says the guiding principle behind his company’s success is one that can lead to success in any line of work, as well as outside of the business world. He explains the company’s cornerstone philosophy is no simpler than what is known as the golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

With these simple words from the Bible, B.R. Kreider & Son has built a reputation for being one of the most responsive and professional excavating, paving and site management contractors in Pennsylvania. Kreider says the company always strives to “wow the customer” by going the extra mile to ensure that all of the client’s needs are met – even the ones not specifically spelled out in the contract.

For example, Kreider says, one of the company’s crews was recently working on a job alongside a busy highway. When a truck pulling a wide load was seen approaching, B.R. Kreider’s workers stopped what they were doing and pulled back barricades, allowing the truck to pass. The next construction site down the road was being worked on by crews that did not move their barricades, and traffic was backed up, Kreider says.

He says the company’s employees work hard to be professional and friendly with customers, and customers definitely take notice.

“We have a lot of comments about the impression our employees leave on a customer,” Kreider says. That feedback is shared with the entire company, he adds, mainly to show everyone the impact a little extra effort can have on the company’s business and reputation.

“We pretty much get a couple of [positive comments] a week,” Kreider says.

Family Ties
The company was founded in 1936 by Benjamin R. Kreider, Ken Kreider’s grandfather. Benjamin Kreider had excavation experience from nearly 20 years in the nursery business, and began offering landscaping and grading services. The company was a family affair from the beginning, with Benjamin Kreider’s wife, Virgie, keeping the books and his son, Elvin, working in the field after school and during the summers. Eventually, Elvin Kreider became a partner in the business and father and son expanded the company’s services to include more excavation and asphalt paving capabilities.

The company was incorporated in 1969, although the Kreider family was still firmly in control. Elvin Kreider’s sons Ken and Jim began sharing management and administration duties in the 1970s, and his daughter Carol assisted with administration.

When Elvin Kreider retired in 2001, he turned over control of the company to his sons and daughter. Today, a fourth generation – consisting of Ken Kreider’s son and two nieces – are involved in the company’s operations.

Leaders as Servants
The family atmosphere at B.R. Kreider is not limited to the Kreider family, as the company tries to keep its employees feeling like they have ownership of the company and its projects. Kreider says the business enjoys a turnover rate of around 2 percent, and that most of the employees who leave the company in a given year have only been with B.R. Kreider for less than two years.

“We try to keep employees feeling a part of the family,” he says.

Anniversaries are marked with special breakfasts in honor of the employees, and management frequently holds informal meetings with employees to share the company’s financial details. Kreider says the company believes in the “leaders as servants” approach, which focuses the management team on serving the needs of its employees.

“I think [our employees stay] because we hold real high the value of our employees and we do what it takes to take care of them and treat them the way we would want to be treated,” he says.

Employees always have an opportunity to move up in the company, he says, and the majority of its operators began their careers as laborers.

“We basically choose them from how their attitude is,” Kreider says. “How they perform as a laborer tells us how they will perform as an operator.”

Market Leader
Today, B.R. Kreider performs mostly commercial work, with a significant portion of residential work. Kreider says the company has a high profile in the St. Louis market.

“I would call us a leader in our market area,” Kreider says, adding that the company was recently ranked second in the region for site excavation, paving and site management by Central Pennsylvania Business Journal.

One of the company’s greatest advantages, it says, is the fact that it provides customers with many services under the same roof.

“The diversity of our capabilities, service and our continued financial strength allow us to have a strategic advantage over our competitors,” the company says. “By performing all the services under one contractor, one can minimize costs, increase efficiencies and increase project cycle time.”

On the commercial side, B.R. Kreider offers site management, excavating, paving and site work for residential developers. For homeowners, the company provides paving services including driveways, decorative stone, patios and walkways. Residential excavation services provided by the company include general excavation, sinkhole repairs, septic systems and pond installation.

The company also provides repair services for excavation equipment and crushing and recycling services. B.R. Kreider says it added crushing and recycling services was done for ecological reasons.

“B.R. Kreider & Son Inc. was motivated to provide a state-of-the-art portable crushing and screening unit geared toward environment preservation and reutilization of America’s natural resources,” the company says.

Not Always Price
Kreider says the company’s breadth of services and reputation for customer service have proven to be indispensable as the economy has slowed. “The biggest challenge facing us right now, even though our backlog is bigger than it was last year … [is that] our competition and the market is such that jobs are going for under cost, so we’re having a hard time filling that backlog,” Kreider says.

Rising fuel and materials costs have made it difficult for some clients to resist the call of contractors offering extremely low bids, but Kreider says he has seen this strategy backfire on more than one occasion.

In one case, he says, his company was called in to redo a paving job that had been awarded to a competitor offering a much lower bid. When B.R. Kreider’s equipment arrived on the site, Kreider says, its equipment sunk into the botched paving. Instances like that solidify the difference between price and quality, Kreider says.

“It’s not all about the price,” he says.

The fact that B.R. Kreider has amassed a large number of repeat customers who trust the company has helped it, he says.
    
New Competitors
Making things even more complicated is the fact that many of the company’s chief suppliers have become direct competitors, Kreider says.

“I think the most significant thing that we’re dealing with that we didn’t used to is that most material suppliers like stone and asphalt are being consolidated into a few conglomerates that are starting to own the supply,” he says. “It makes us a little unsure of what that means to us in the future in that area.”

These new conglomerates are beginning to add their own paving services, putting them head-to-head with B.R. Kreider while at the same time B.R. Kreider is among their best customers. “Because we are their largest customer, we’ve been doing pretty well at keeping our backlog and keeping jobs in front of us,” he says.