All in the Family: Hackensack's J. Fletcher Creamer & Son celebrates 90 years of serviceBergen.com
Posted: Monday July 15, 2013, 3:50 PM
Dale, Fletch and Glenn Creamer of J. Fletcher Creamer & Son. (Photo courtesy of Robert Flock)Founded in 1923, J. Fletcher Creamer & Son Inc. remains one of the premier contractors in New Jersey, a recognized name throughout the United States and pretty much a model of how create a truly lasting family business.
Five generations of the Creamer family have poured their sweat and devotion into the company, headquartered in Hackensack. The fuel keeping their engine humming boils down to one key ingredient.
"There is no substitute for hard work," CEO J. Fletcher Creamer Jr. says. "There's no shortcuts."
And hard work it is. A full service, multi-disciplined contracting company, Creamer & Son specializes in (deep breath now) renewable energy; fiber optic installation; utilities (electric, telecommunications, gas and water); pile and shoring installation; cleaning and lining of water mains; road and bridge construction; jack and boring; guide rail and overhead signs; internal pipe seals; structures; and parking garages. They also boast an environmental remediation arm called Creamer Environmental.
"We try to see what's out there to capitalize on the hot markets," Fletch Jr. says. "When a new type of service is required, we are ready to provide it safely and effectively.
That breadth of service, covering infrastructure of every stripe, has also helped keep the company going through good economic times and bad.
"Not too many people are as diversified as we are," he says. "It helps us with the peaks and valleys."
No ShortcutsNinety years is a long time for a company to stick around, and Creamer & Son has survived at times through sheer gumption and smart growth. In 1923, Fletch Jr.'s great-grandfather, J. Fletcher Creamer II, started Creamer & Son in Fort Lee. He had only himself and a Ford rack truck, so he started out hauling coal and then delivered fuel oil to people's homes. And so, Creamer & Son was off and running.
In the '30s, Creamer & Son hauled excavated materials as part of the construction of the George Washington Bridge. In the '50s, the company installed air-conditioning units for businesses.
In the '60s, under the direction of Fletch Jr.'s father and grandfather, the company sought more construction work, particularly with highways, and began its long-term relationship with numerous water, power, gas and telecommunications companies. The '80s saw the addition of the guide rail and overhead sign business and the venture into the specialized field of cleaning and lining water mains insitu. The company added the very unique business of manufacturing and installing internal pipe seals, marketed as In-Weg, to its range of services.
The '90s bustled with the new market of fiber optics, which the company installed throughout the country. In that same decade, Fletch Jr.'s father partnered with Richard Greenberg to form Creamer Environmental. The remediation company works to clean up contaminated sites for utility companies, often hauling out acres of bad soil, installing steel plating sometimes 35 or 40 feet below surface level and trucking in clean soil.
"It's probably one of the best environmental companies on the East Coast," Fletch Jr. says.
Renewable energy represented the company's first new venture of the 21st century. Creamer & Son now constructs wind and solar projects. And the most recent foray into diversification has been in the business of utility mark outs. (When a company wants to dig or excavate, it has to ensure that utilities and anything else underground is marked out to ensure safety.) The venture, dubbed Atlantic Infra-Trac, responds to the One Call system in New Jersey.
That's the sort of work that keeps communities running.
"We're not building beautiful buildings," Fletch Jr. says. But without the likes of Creamer & Son, water and electricity stop flowing, highways crumble – basically, everything goes to pieces.
Family BusinessFive generations of the Creamer family have worked to keep that from happening. J. Fletcher Creamer II got the ball rolling modestly enough.
"He was always dressed to the nines," Fletch Jr. says. "A very meticulous guy with everything. We've tried to keep those traits going forward."
And forward the company, passing on to Creamer II's son, who passed it on to his son, Fletch Jr.'s father.
"My dad really was my mentor in the business," he says. "I had a mentor, a best friend and a father all wrapped up in one guy."
Then Fletch Jr. and his three brothers joined the crew, followed by their children. You can expect six or seven family members working for the company at any given time. Fletch Jr. currently employs his son and a niece, and his daughter worked for the company until she gave birth to her third child.
"Then I officially retired her," he says with a laugh.
Fletch Jr.'s rise to the top of the company is, he says, pretty typical of the family's deep involvement. He started out as a 15-year-old collecting trash from Palisades Amusement Park.
"And I couldn't drive," he says, "so you know which end of the garbage truck I worked on."
Eschewing college – he studied for two years but never finished – Fletch Jr. learned everything he needed from working his way through the company. He spent seven years as an estimator, he worked as a superintendent, he grew into engineering.
"I had probably the best education I could have," he says. "I did all the stuff from the bottom up, as they say."
That hard work paid off. The company grew and grew, and Fletch Jr. took the reins as president and CEO in 1982.
Today, the 90-year-old company maintains New Jersey offices in Hackensack, Linden, Wall and Folsom, plus offices in Sylmar, Calif., and Beltsville, Md. It has worked in 37 states, and even the distinctive light brown paint on all its construction equipment is patented to the company.
So what's Creamer & Son's secret?
"I can't give out the secrets," Fletch Jr. jokes. And then he gives credit where credit is due: the company's dedicated employees, some of whom have worked for the Creamer family for more than 40 years and have never had another job.
"The people who work for us – they're what makes us successful," he says. "We have some of the finest people in the industry."
Of course, that includes the many members of the Creamer family who have swelled Creamer & Son's ranks over the decades. It takes incredible hard work to keep a family business running, let alone expanding, for so long.
"We try to lead by example," Fletch Jr. says. "You've got to love the business to be in it."
Storm HelpIn the wake of Superstorm Sandy, J. Fletcher Creamer & Son worked tirelessly to help utility companies, including JCP&L, Verizon and United Water, repair and improve substations in the New York and New Jersey area.
At one of Verizon's main data centers in lower Manhattan, some areas of which lost power for weeks, Creamer & Son employees worked around the clock for two weeks to repair damage from the storm. That required lugging 100-pound battery packs up and down 22 floors numerous times every single day.
