By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
NOV. 21, 2023 | Years from now, when a second Gwinnett-based company celebrates 100 years in business in the county, if that firm wants to know how to mark the occasion, they need only look no further than what E.R. Snell was doing for its 100th anniversary.
Friday night at the Gas South Center, the company highlighted the occasion with an elegant celebration, complete with reception, dinner, speakers and commemorative video. It was an elegant occasion, attended by 350 of the company’s employees, friends, customers, public officials and members of the community. A year in planning, it was a major success.
Additionally, as people left the Gas South Ballroom, attendees were presented with a 160 page commemorative book of the company’s history and many photographs, aptly entitled Bridging the Generations, explaining the company’s history and philosophy. The title is perfect, since the company has been in the bridge construction business and since its beginning has emphasized family members being part of the business.
What started out when Gladstone F. Snell began in 1923 as primarily quarrying stone and building culverts, today is a multi-million dollar contracting firm, building highways. Its products include bridges, paving, asphalt plant operations, all primarily with t governments, and contract work with corporations in grading and construction.
Over and over at the Friday fete, and constantly in the printed book, E.R. Snell Contractor Inc. tells how the family runs the company, with individual family members in key slots. Only working family members may be stockholders in the company. At the book’s printing, there were 21 family members as stockholders.
While the book details the company’s overall history, it is also easy to read, and often quite detailed. It emphasizes how the company sought to be an upstanding company from the beginning, paying its bills on time, and always a community booster.
Perhaps the best story from the book gave me a cackle when reading it. In 1982, one of the family members, 23-year old Jimmy Camp, (son of James and Carol Snell Camp) was in the Augusta area on a job when a hydraulic hose blew out on a scraper. Covered with dirt from the job, Jimmy went to a supplier and told the older counterman he was from E.R. Snell and needed the hose. The hose cost $400, and Jimmy didn’t have that much on him, nor a credit card. “How will you pay for it?” he was asked.
Jimmy said: “I figured I would charge it.”
“Who did you say you were with?”
“E.R. Snell.”
“Just a minute.” So the counterman walked up a long flight of stairs and disappeared. Jimmy was getting itchy, wanting to get the grader working with a new hose.
Finally, the older counterman walked back down the stairs and said “Come here, young man.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jimmy, just hoping he’d be able to get his hose. “Do you want the building?” the man asked.
“Do I want the building?” said Jimmy, not understanding. “I don’t want the building. I just need to get this hose.”
Then the man said he had called his boss, who had told him that if E.R. Snell Sr. wanted to buy the building on credit, sell it.
That story Jimmy tells sums up a lot of what E.R. Snell Contractor Inc. has stood for 100 years.
Quoting from the book: “Jimmy still gets emotional when he tells that story four decades later. He had assumed everybody operated with integrity like his grandfather and the rest of his family.”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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