BusinessReport.com

Article originally published April 24, 2001.

“With your employees and also with your customers, you’ve got to shoot straight from the shoulder. Your word has got to be your bond, and you don’t ever misrepresent anything to them.”

Age: 79

Title: Chairman emeritus, Turner Industries Ltd.

Hometown: Elizabeth, La.

Personal: Married

Education: Bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, Louisiana State University; master’s in business administration, Harvard School of Business

‘He’s always tending after his business’

Over 40 years, Bert Turner has built Turner Industries

into a national force in industrial services.

When Bert S. Turner, chairman emeritus of Turner Industries Ltd., says he built his company from pieces, he’s not speaking figuratively.

At the same time Yuba Consolidated Industries was skidding into Chapter 11 bankruptcy more than 40 years ago, one of its subsidiaries, Nichols Construction Co., was actually doing OK, thanks to plenty of industrial construction contracts and—relatively new at the time—contract maintenance.

“We were still running pretty well, but their cash flow wasn’t worth a damn,” said Turner, who was then Nichols’ vice president. After 10 years with Exxon, Turner had accepted a job offer from the construction company’s founder and principal owner, Bob Nichols.

Nichols died in the late 1950s, leaving the company to his wife, who put it up for sale soon afterward. Turner had the opportunity to buy a portion of it, but back then wasn’t able to swing it financially.

When Yuba Consolidated eventually went off the rails, Turner seized the day, placing the high bid for Nichols’ equipment at a sheriff’s auction.

“I finally salvaged the pieces and put it together, and after some changes along the way, I finally put my name on it,” he noted.

Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Turner Industries today is the largest privately owned industrial service organization in the state, with 10,000 employees in 15 separate companies involved in thousands of projects around the United States. The company has $100 million worth of construction equipment and regional offices in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Florida.

Turner Industries is, in fact, one of the leading industrial service companies in the nation, ranked No. 51 among ENR Magazine’s top 400 companies. The company is fourth in revenue among top petroleum contractors and third among top refinery contractors and petrochemical plant contractors. Forbes magazine ranks Turner Industries No. 422 among its top 500 privately held companies.

The company’s services include environmental remediation, pipe fabrication and painting, scaffolding equipment rental, turnaround and shutdown, heavy hauling and rigging, information technology and personnel services. Hoover’s Online magazine calls Turner Industries a “top U.S. player” in industrial construction, contract maintenance and specialty services.

And Bert Turner is one of the recipients of the Hall of Fame award this year.

All of this is the result of Bert Turner’s itch to climb out from beneath Exxon’s nurturing wing all those years ago and “try my hand on my own.”

An Exxon foundation scholarship, the GI Bill and the fact that his wife had a job made it possible for Turner to take enough time off work to earn a master’s degree from Harvard Business School. He returned to Louisiana in the summers between semesters to work at Exxon, and returned to the company after graduating in 1949.

Turner had gone to work for the oil giant in 1946, fresh from his service in the Army Corps of Engineers as a second lieutenant during World War II. He’d spent more than two years in the Pacific, assigned to an airborne aviation engineering unit whose specialty was carving temporary roads through the jungle and patching together bombed airstrips.

Turner entered the military soon after graduating from Louisiana State University in 1943 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. By taking summer courses, he was able to finish his degree in just 3 1/2 years.

As well as his mechanical engineering degree served him, Turner said his experience with the university’s ROTC program—in which, as a cadet colonel, he commanded an engineering regiment—was probably his most important influence in college. It gave him a “good dose” of the concept of leadership, he said.

“I still think it’s a shame that the government and the politicians have downgraded the ROTC program, because during World War II a hell of a high percentage of the officers came from ROTC ranks,” Turner said.

He was born Nov. 2, 1921, in the Allen Parish hamlet of Elizabeth, but was packed off at a young age to Missouri by his mother, a retired schoolteacher, after Turner’s father died. The pair settled into his mother’s hometown—a “little bitty old town” of slightly more than 300 inhabitants, Turner said.

He graduated from high school in 1939, after which mother and son moved to Baton Rouge so Turner could attend LSU. The choice of schools was no accident, he said, as his mother was acquainted with the university’s reputation as a top-notch educational institution.

Turner has hung his hat in Baton Rouge ever since. He and Sue, his wife of 53 years, recently built a new house after living in the same home for 49 years. Turner admitted that moving after so long in the same place was difficult—and not just for sentimental reasons.

“Over that length of time, you accumulate a lot of things,” he said. “Some of it is junk.”

From a business angle, Baton Rouge doesn’t look quite as fetching as it did a year ago, either, said Turner. Nevertheless, the Capital City is somewhat insulated from the type of general economic downturn now rattling markets throughout the United States, he noted.

The fact that state offices are located here, along with the presence of LSU and well-established industries in the parish, has translated over the years into a fair amount of economic muscle and endurance for Baton Rouge, Turner said.

“To have made it and survived as long as they have, (those companies) are damn good and seasoned,” he said. “So that’s a real plus, too, to have that kind of industry in this part of the world. … They know how to make money, and that’s the way to survive.”

A good thing, no doubt, for a company like Turner’s, whose bread and butter is servicing those industries. Turner Industries probably will feel some effect from the current slowdown, he noted, but only after a year or so as the shock waves filter through “corporate command.”

All in all, Turner said, the company foresees no significant problems as a result of the slowdown—nothing a little “smart and reasonable” belt tightening can’t handle.

“Economically, we’re rather fortunate I think, in spite of the slowdown you see taking place around the country, and job terminations and so on,” he said. “We’ve been fortunate enough that Baton Rouge’s economy has stayed reasonably strong.”

Even when Louisiana’s oil and gas bubble burst in the 1980s, Turner said, the company managed to sustain growth, despite a molasses-like marketplace.

Turner Industries sailed through the period with relative ease on the strength of its contract maintenance, equipment rentals and some construction work, he said. Companies more dependent on exploration and refining fared worse during the long dark night of the ’80s.

These days, Turner’s company continues to grow, diversifying through the establishment of offices outside Louisiana and carefully expanding the range of services it offers, he said.

“We try to make sure something’s going to fit with us before we jump on it.”

Asked to comment on his own success, Turner said he’s been fortunate and willing to work hard—really hard—throughout his life, and cited his basic philosophy of business:

“With your employees and also with your customers, you’ve got to shoot straight from the shoulder,” he said. “Your word has got to be your bond, and you don’t ever misrepresent anything to them. With your employees, you’ve got to be sure you’re fair and square.”

Roland Toups, who took the reins after Turner retired as CEO, noted that the big boss—even at 79—still puts on a suit and tie and comes to work every day.

Turner rates his successor “a hell of a sharp young man—younger than I am.” Toups describes Turner as an icon and a visionary.

“I’ve been with him for 34 years,” Toups said. “It’s been a wonderful relationship. … I think we shared a lot of good times and lot of tough times.”

Toups called Turner a hands-on executive who knows the ins and outs of every aspect of the business and understands that any company’s success depends on the people it hires.

The loyalty he engenders among his employees is such that turnover is practically nil, Toups added, noting that the executive staff has an average of 23 years with the company, and salaried staff an average of 18 years.

Those associated with Turner Industries feel a “deep gratitude” for what Turner has accomplished, Toups said.

“They kind of hold him up as an icon—as somebody who’s provided jobs to help support 10,000 families,” he added. “Folks appreciate him and respect him for that.”

Toups’ rise to CEO of Turner Industries began with a job as division chief. Since then, he said, he’s watched Turner expand the company from a mere seedling to a giant whose roots bring in about $800 million a year.

Far from being a tycoon of the silver-spoon variety, Turner is a genuine “self-made man,” who crafted a hugely successful business by virtue of his own wits and resources, Toups said.

“He came up on his own,” he stressed. “When he was at LSU, he had to scrape and hustle. This was not a gift to him.”

Toups declined the invitation to temper his praise of Turner with an examination of potential foibles, insisting Turner Industries’ “founder and guiding force” deserves only “wonderful accolades.”

But he did characterize Turner as “driven.”

“He’s smart,” Toups said. “He’s aggressive—mentally tough. When you get that really driven personality, you probably become a workaholic to some extent. He’s always tending after his business. He’s a businessman first.”