Las Vegas, NV

March 3-7, 2026

Open Menu
Close Menu

Ep. 111: Creating a Turnkey Experience with Chris Lane of Ronald Lane Inc.

Share:

1/14/2020

Chris LaneWhile Chris Lane’s company employs more than 430 West Virginians and Pennsylvanians, he says their goal isn’t to be the biggest, just the most complete pipeline contractor in the region. The 27-year-old of vice president, Ronald Lane Inc. say creating a turnkey experience for clients has been the secret to their success. The company has 13 locations, over 500 pieces of equipment and handles every aspect of pipelaying including clearing land, processing trees, directional drilling, painting, welding, backfilling and hydrotesting.

Chris and Guest Host Dusty Weis also discuss:

  • The pros and cons of a family business
  • The importance of having dedicated safety staff
  • Installing environmental controls
  • Digitizing asset management
  • Taking pride in your people
  • Road tripping to CONEXPO-CON/AGG

If you want to listen to more recorded podcasts, click below to see the CONEXPO-CON/AGG archive of episodes.

View All Episodes

Listen on your favorite app: Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsiHeartRadio | Spotify | Stitcher 

Show Transcript:

Intro:      

Welcome to CONEXPO-CON/AGG Radio, highlighting the latest construction technology and trends to drive your business forward. Coming up in March of 2020, CONEXPO-CON/AGG is North America's largest construction trade show. We bring you expert advice from your favorite brands, startups and industry peers, and for even more news, sign up for our weekly 365 e-newsletter at CONEXPO-CON/AGG.com/subscribe.

Dusty Weis:

I'm Dusty Weis and I'm going to be your host today for Contractor Conversations. Missy Scherber taking some time off after welcoming a new dirt diva to her family. We're sending our very best to Missy and Trevor, and if you haven't yet, make sure you pop on over to her Instagram to tell them congratulations.

But while she's away, I'll keep the conversation moving. Every month on Contractor Conversations we talk to boots on the ground, contractors from around the country about their projects, workforce development, technology, and of course equipment.

This month's guest is Chris Lane, a pipeline and commercial developments contractor out of Clarksburg, West Virginia. He's the Vice President of Ronald Lane, Incorporated, rising through the ranks to hold that leadership role at the ripe old age of 27. With work sites and equipment yards scattered throughout Appalachia, RLI employs more than 430 West Virginians and Pennsylvania, but as Chris tells me, their goal isn't to be the biggest, just the most complete pipeline contractor in the region.

Chris Lane:        

We do pride ourselves on being one of the few turnkey pipeline contractors. We specialize in doing any type of natural gas pipeline construction from conceptual to operating and plumbing gas. We have in-house all the specialty tools and equipment, the skilled people to be able to perform everything from start to finish on a line. With that said, a lot clients are major gas companies. It's Dominion or Mark West or Intero or EQT. We worked with a lot of companies over our 40 year history. Another side arm of our business is commercial development. So along with pipeline construction we're able to facilitate commercial law for our clients as well as even some of our competition. We worked on the header extension with Dominion. We house facilities for Proactive as well as EQT and Energy Transfer. So we do a lot of different things for the oil and gas and energy industry.

Dusty Weis:      

I imagine with the market being what it is right now and you working in natural gas pipelines that you've got more than enough work to keep you busy right now. But it says right on your website that you're not trying to be the biggest, you're trying to be the best. What's unique about your business? What separates you from your competition?

Chris Lane:        

A lot of it is that turnkey mentality. We have a gas company looking to install a pipeline here in North Central West Virginia. They come into the area, they acquire the land, they get everything ready and whenever they come to us we can facilitate them with a location for them to have their own staff or we can construct them an office, facilitate a yard for them to store their materials, for them to do any prep plan work on in the early stages of it. Then once construction of the pipeline starts we've got all the equipment to do all the front end and all the tree clearing work, all the grubbing.

Chris Lane:        

We can roll right into grading the right-of-ways, locating the materials, bringing the materials to the site, go on any fabrication offsite or onsite and we go right on through the full installation process. A lot of other contractors, whether they're big or small, are unable to do one or a series of paths on a pipeline. A lot of contractors don't do any clearing. A lot of companies don't do their own logistics and it becomes a larger coordinated event when you have a lot of different companies involved. So being a turnkey contractor, we can give our clients single point of contact for all the services they need to complete their project.

Dusty Weis:      

Listening to you describe all the different types of work that you do, I imagine that walking through your equipment yard must be like walking around out on the CONEXPO-CON/AGG show floor just with all the different types of equipment you must have to have.

Chris Lane:        

Yeah. No, in our truck trailer and equipment fleet we have roughly a little over 500 units and we have those unit scattered across multiple locations. We fully staff four different locations on a regular basis, but in total we actually have 13 locations across West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Dusty Weis:      

It's a pretty large operation with 431 people on staff, but this is a company that was founded originally by your dad, Ronald Lane. How did you personally get into the business in the first place and how has it grown over the years?

Chris Lane:        

As far as getting into the business, I didn't really have too many options. I wasn't really looking to be a firefighter or a policeman or anything of that nature. Growing up I spent my childhood on job sites. I spent my teenage years in the office reviewing contracts and going over bid documents. Spent a lot of my evenings and weekends either working on our family farm or working in the offices and it's something that looking back, I wasn't really interviewed or I wasn't really acquired to becoming part of the company. I was almost bred to be a part of it.

Dusty Weis:      

Sounds like you just always were a part of it.

Chris Lane:        

For our entire family, this company in this business is not really a job. It's a lifestyle. Something that we live and breathe around the clock.

Dusty Weis:      

What do you like about working for a family owned business and what are some of the challenges that it presents?

Chris Lane:        

As far as one of the best things about working with family is you never have to hide your true feelings. Probably one of the worst things about working for a family business is you never have to hide your true feelings.

Dusty Weis:      

You guys have it out on the job site a few times, huh?

Chris Lane:        

Well, it's refreshing that we can be bluntly honest with each other. There's never really any beating around the bush. We can be honest. We can be to the point and over the years we've had to learn to compartmentalize the situations we're in. We can have a disagreement at the office and two hours later meet up and take our families out to dinner and laugh and joke as if nothing happened. So being able to compartmentalize that has been a big key to working together for an extended period of time.

Dusty Weis:      

I imagine that just about every day out on the job site feels a lot like Thanksgiving.

Chris Lane:        

It does. Yep, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Dusty Weis:      

You're a younger guy, 27-years-old, younger guy out on the job site and VP of the company. You're probably a lot younger than a lot of the guys on the job site even. Do you find that to be an advantage or a disadvantage sometimes?

Chris Lane:        

I see it both ways. Fortunately for a lot of the folks out there that's not aware of my true age, a lot of them misjudged a what my age actually is and I think that's because I wasn't really given the option to have much of a immature childhood. I was forced to mature at a younger age and that's carried with me throughout my years. That's been a big asset for me in the field. As far as being the vice president, the role that I took on here recently, I'm proud to say that I've held most all positions within the company other than payroll or welding or drilling, some of the more specific tasks. But I've been a laborer out in the field. I've been operators. I've been a driver. I've had a lot of different hats.

Chris Lane:        

I've been project coordinator. Prior to becoming vice president, I was director of our commercial development as well as director over our logistics and our maintenance department, but it really helped me throughout the years being in all the different areas, all the different aspects of our company to really settle into the role I'm in now. I'm proud to be in this role at my age specifically because looking back at our company's history, whenever I became vice president of the company, I was the exact same age my father was when he started the company.

Dusty Weis:      

Oh, that's really cool. I've kind of come up where for the first 10 years in my career I was always the youngest guy in the room too and I was always kind of grateful that I had coworkers and colleagues that never really looked at my age as a drawback. They always just sort of looked at my accomplishments and my experiences and judge me based on that. You find the same thing with the folks you work with?

Chris Lane:        

Yeah, and it's been a big benefit to me that I've been out there and I've been in a lot of the positions that the guys had been in so I can speak from knowledge about the issues and the things they're going through and can constructively find ways to help make their day-to-day easier because I've been in their shoes. From time to time I still go out in the field and will help and assist various crews myself, hands-on.

Dusty Weis:      

So headquartered where you guys are in doing the work you do out in the mountains of West Virginia, out in Clarksburg. You're just down the road from Roanoke. It's hilly country out there. That's got to present your crews with some pretty unique challenges. How do you maintain job site safety and then environment?

Chris Lane:        

We've got a lot of different individuals that specialize in safety. In addition to that, aside from our dedicated safety team, I think we're so far one of the only contractors I've heard of that's deployed dedicated safety individuals for client crossings. As dangerous as steep slopes have been, being from this area, our management or our key personnel is very familiar with the steep slopes and they're familiar with them in a way that out West you have the Rockies and you have other steep terrain that a lot of companies are familiar with, but they are what are. They're the Rockies, a lot of rocky soil. The thing that differentiates the Appalachian area from other steep parts of the country is its high concentration of clay soil in the ground. So whenever you take steep slope and have a high concentration of clay, then you get a greasy slippery slope that whenever it rains, a few hours after rain in the Rockies, that ground will soak up a lot of moisture. Around here when it rains and all the ground retains the moisture-

Dusty Weis:      

You got a slip on a slide.

Chris Lane:        

Yeah. So a lot of our people was essentially bred for the pipeline industry and a lot of our management is second, third generation pipeliners and they've pipelined in this area all their life. So you know, it really comes second nature to them to contend with this soil. But one of the larger safety concerns that we've recognized and we've put things into motion to help prevent and recognize any issues is having a dedicated hotline or existing line safety coordinator. Then all he does is with all these added pipelines that's going in, it's really hard to lay a pipeline anymore without having to cross one, two, three or sometimes a dozen or two dozen lines as you're laying it.

Dusty Weis:      

Oh geez.

Chris Lane:        

Whenever you're crossing an active line, it's essentially a loaded bomb that if you strike it or if you miss handle it could be catastrophic. So we even created positions within our company to specifically recognize and identify those line crossings and make sure that safety is at its top best performance and communication is at top and best performance anytime that we're crossing those lines.

Dusty Weis:      

Well and I'm sure that the folks out in the field are grateful to have those safety professionals looking over their shoulder too while they're out there because you paint a heck of a picture just of those greasy slopes with the rain and the clay and all that. I imagine that poses some pretty dire equipment challenges as well out in the mountains.

Chris Lane:        

Yeah, and the big thing that we look at is we size our equipment specifically for the terrain that we're in. A lot of companies has a standard sized dozer and an excavator that they use for 90% of their work. Our fleet is a lot more blended. We size specifically for the task as opposed to sizing a machine that is large enough to handle tasks no matter how big or small they are. But sometimes you put a large machine on a steep slope to do a task a small machine can do, then you're required to have a lot more machines to be able to tether and anchor it down and make sure it doesn't slide off and result in an injury.

Dusty Weis:      

Now working on slopes like that, that also poses some tricky environmental concerns, especially when it comes to runoff, washouts and the like. I understand RLI has developed its own techniques for handling those as well.

Chris Lane:        

Yeah. One of the big things that we've started utilizing here in the last couple of years is environmental material called switchgrass. as opposed to using composite sock previously, now we're utilizing a lot of the switchgrass sock, which is about 10% the weight of the composite socks. So when we're out there installing environmental controls as opposed to needing equipment and large machines that come in and handle the material, we won't do a lot of it by hand now. A lot of our guys on the field have really enjoyed it because there's areas where it's just not accessible by equipment before environmental controls are installed.

Chris Lane:        

So you've had to install the heavier pieces in smaller sections and carry them in by hand. Now they can do 10 times the work with less strain and less heavy lifting. It's allowed for a lot better environmental crews out there. It's allowed us to take care of environmental lot quicker and then the materials have held up really good. We've had very few, if any, environmental concerns across their projects.

Dusty Weis:      

I imagine their backs feel a lot better at the end of a long day to lugging those things around.

Chris Lane:        

Yep, they do.

Dusty Weis:      

So tell me a little bit more about your equipment fleet. What's your favorite piece of equipment and how do you make sure that you keep a diverse enough collection of equipment to serve whatever need comes up on those slopes?

Chris Lane:        

It's a tough question there. Currently probably my favorite piece up there would be our pack rig.

Dusty Weis:      

And how many pieces of equipment in the fleet you have?

Chris Lane:        

Roughly around 500.

Dusty Weis:      

And you store those at lots that you've got all over West Virginia.

Chris Lane:        

It's very rare to have all of our pieces in one location. It presents a large logistical task.

Dusty Weis:      

I imagine that you face a number of other fleet management challenges as well with a fleet that big.

Chris Lane:        

So one of the biggest things we have is identification. Whenever you get a lot of machines up there being able to identify them all properly is always the task. So at our corporate office and our asset managers office I've employed a technique that I prefer. We have large boards around the walls of our office and we actually have a photograph of each and every truck, machine, trailer, everything on the wall and their corresponding unit number to that.

Chris Lane:        

We also have corresponding lift with the units and their pictures on them as well where anybody that's out there can say, "Well, we're looking at this excavator, here's a unit member." But if something happens in the unit member gets removes, they can go out there and say, "We're looking at this excavator and no, it's a John Deere. Here's the [inaudible 00:15:18]." And our asset manager could stand up, look around her wall and quickly deduce what unit member the machine could be just by looking at the photographs. Then they can pull the file of two, three, four or five machines that would match that description and ask the person in the field some more detailed questions and match up to what the unit number is. It really helps us keep track of everything.

Dusty Weis:      

I love it. You guys are kicking it old school there. Have you ever thought about modernizing and looking at some of the GPS telematic solutions that are out there for fleet management or is that just not your style?

Chris Lane:        

We utilize a lot of GPS in our over the road trucks, but right now we've not had too many flaws with their current system. We do utilize Manager Plus. It was a software system that I'd actually learned about at the previous CONEXPO and we've been utilizing it a lot to digitize a lot of our maintenance on our machines and to help our technicians in the field have easier access to the current maintenance files. With all the locations we have and all the different job sites that we have going on it would be difficult for us to keep paper copies with all these locations. So having that system and that software is definitely helping us digitize all of our records and making it more available to our personnel in the field.

Dusty Weis:      

Well since you brought it up, let's talk about that last trip to CONEXPO. How many times you've been to CONEXPO and what'd you find there that you like? Why do you attend?

Chris Lane:        

Myself, I've been to the last two CONEXPOS and I've made a personal goal each time to try to cover all of the floor space. However, I do find myself two weeks prior to the show going through and fully reading through all the vendor lists and trying to familiarize ourselves with all the vendors out there. I employ my team to do that as well, is to go and look at all the vendors and really find which one of them we feel could offer us either new technology, upgraded technology or to help us improve what we're already working on. I make a lot of short lists of who I want to see and I prioritize. So as I'm covering the show floor, I make it a point to see all the vendors but I also make it a point to employ time management of how much time I want to spend with each vendor.

Chris Lane:        

A lot of times just by seeing the vendor's website or hearing a little bit about them, you might not think that that's a vendor or supplier that would be able to provide value to your company. When you go out there and you see their booth, you can see their product firsthand, it sparks new ideas, sparks new interests on what they could possibly do for your company. So I always found it very important to go out and at least I'll walk by and spend five to 15 minutes at all of the vendors and all the booths there just to be able to see all these products. Manager Plus is actually a software system out there that I had not put on my short list, that I had not intended on implementing into our company. And ultimately when I was out there and stopped in and took the time to actually speak to one of their representatives there and look through their system, it sparked an idea. Then ultimately here a few years later, it's gotten to the point where it's, it's make our entire operation more efficient.

Dusty Weis:      

I love that you do your homework ahead of time and actually go into the thing with a battle plan because looking at that show floor, I just, I feel like there's no way that you can cover everything unless you really go into it with a plan. But I imagine that there are other people that put just as much time as you into planning out their week or how long do you go for when you go to CONEXPO?

Chris Lane:        

We typically go out for the entire week. I'll go in a few days prior. A lot of times we set up meetings and events with our primary vendors that we normally use that's out there at the show, and we're able to meet with a lot of our existing vendors in ways that we don't typically do as far as meeting with higher level executives or representatives from other divisions or other markets. On the last CONEXPO, it was a unique experience because I rarely take any vacations. Typically, I just take a long weekend here and there.

Chris Lane:        

My girlfriend at the time was very adamant that I needed a vacation and I agreed to her that instead of flying out to CONEXPO that we'd just drive out. It's a pretty good drive from West Virginia out to Vegas and it took us nearly a week to do it mainly because when we left we never had a set itinerary. We never said, "Well, we're going to drive 10 hours this day and make it to this city." We just left and kind of looped our way out, which was the impression that she had had.

Chris Lane:        

Little did she know that along our course out through there I was making several appointments with a lot of our key vendors to actually stop and visit their facilities. On our journey to CONEXPO I was able to see the main parts distribution facility for Nissan Bobcat up in Chicago. I spent some time at John Deere's corporate facility in Rhode Island and seen a lot of different locations and met with a lot of our vendors on our way up through there. So it was an enjoyable experience because I was able to have followups with those companies that CONEXPO to help further the experience.

Dusty Weis:      

It's the great American equipment road trip there all the way across the country, but I imagine those weren't the sorts of roadside attractions that she was interested in stopping at.

Chris Lane:        

It was not, no. She made the best of it.

Dusty Weis:      

She sounds like a champ. Turning back to your business, what are some of the biggest challenges that you're facing as a business owner right now and how have they changed from 10 years ago?

Chris Lane:        

A lot of it is personnel. Last year we implemented a 401k for the first time in our company's history. We increased a lot of other employee benefits, but a lot of that's driven because right now the way the only gas industry is and really the energy industry as a whole, there's a lot of work out there. There's a lot of demand for good companies and there's a lot of new startup companies as well. But right now with simple supply and demand there's a lot of demand for good contractors and the supply shortage is personnel. With the ability of having events like CONEXPO and having the amount of good suppliers and good vendors out there, tooling and getting geared to do business is a lot easier process than it would be without events like CONEXPO. But one of the biggest challenges is always the personnel. If you don't have the people or if you can't acquire the people, then it's challenging to do the work.

Dusty Weis:      

Yeah. With the unemployment rate what it is lately it's a good time to be a worker. Pay is going up, benefits are going up in a lot of different places. Do you find other tricks of the trade for keeping your employees' spirits up on the job site? Stuff that helps their morale?

Chris Lane:        

My father said this to me over and over throughout my life, if he can't make it with good equipment, you're not going to be able to make it with old, bad or junk equipment. So we try to keep our fleet modernized. We are always looking for the latest technologies and ways to make ourselves more efficient. We not only find that being an efficient more modern company is a little bit better for the bottom line, but it helps alleviate basic frustrations that our employees would go through. The frustration of a machine constantly breaking down for a technician, they can't find the right records that he's needing, it helps make their day-to-day a lot more pleasant.

Dusty Weis:      

So looking back at the history of the company, what are some of the completed projects that you guys are most proud of?

Chris Lane:        

Here recently we've been able to successfully assist and insert 3,800 feet of 30 inch 688 wall into a directional drill. It was a large, coordinated, multi-day event that happened in 24 hours. It went round the clock. It was the largest directional drill we'd been a part of and some of the larger pipe that we'd been a part of as well. Back several decades ago, we crossed the Potomac River ...

Dusty Weis:      

Oh wow.

Chris Lane:        

... with line and that was an interesting project because we actually dug the channels and excavators setting in the river and because of our partnership with John Deere at the time and really a lot of the people that my father had met out in the previous CONEXPOS from John Deere, we had a lot of the right contacts where he was able to special order a machine that did not have any fluids, greases or anything that will turn table wet grease. A lot of things was sent dry straight from the factory and we was able to get environmental approval to put that machine in the Potomac to do that because John Deere worked with us on getting us a dry machine that wasn't going to contaminate the water from the surface there.

Dusty Weis:      

It doesn't sound like the job would've got done without having that specialized equipment on-hand.

Chris Lane:        

Exactly. That was a big assistance to us. Now we've done a lot of projects in the Southern part of the state where you'd have four or five, six dozers there with winch lines tethered off for each other, all in line just to hold one excavator on the slope working. We've done a lot of different projects. I think the longest project we done was back in the '90s and it's around 72 miles.

Dusty Weis:      

Well, it sounds like you guys are fine in the work that you need, but then doing great work in the process too, but looking in the next 10, 20 years, what are your goals for the company?

Chris Lane:        

A lot of where we see ourselves in the coming years is we're going to further our footprint in the energy industry. A lot of our future growth is only focused a lot on our commercial developments, on our properties and constructing more buildings and facilities for clients for longterm contracts, as well as having a more steady stable growth in our pipelining division. We've seen that the commercial division does not have as many dollars and cents with it as a pipeline division, but it's a lot more stable. In the last 20 years that we've had or development division that's helped us bring more stability as an overall business as opposed to solely relying on pipeline. Our pipeline work fluctuates and some years you have big years and other years you have slow years, but commercial development seems to be a lot more steady.

Dusty Weis:      

Well, for a guy who doesn't take a lot of vacations as you've admitted here, when you get up in the morning, the alarm clock starts going off, you strap on your boots, go out and get in the truck and take a great big deep breath, drive into work, what keeps you going? What do you love about what you do?

Chris Lane:        

A big thing for me is all of our people. We have a lot of company events every year and throughout the year. Our most recent one was our annual Christmas party and it's a big sense of relief and pride to be able to have a large event and to be able to meet a lot of different families and see lot of different generations, whether it be older generations or younger generation of the people that we work with every day. It does provide a sense of pride knowing that what I'm able to accomplish and what my team is able to accomplish directly results in the success of the families that are joining us and helping us throughout all of our projects.

Dusty Weis:      

When you've got an organization that's that big spread out over large area like yours is, I imagine that it's actually just kind of humbling seeing all those folks brought together in one place.

Chris Lane:        

It is. It's probably the biggest single motivator that I have is not only doing this for my family, but for all the other families that works with us every day.

Dusty Weis:      

Well, Chris Lane, the VP of Ronald Lane, Inc, pipeline contractor at Clarksburg, West Virginia. Are you ready for the lightning round? All right. If you weren't doing this job, what would you be doing for a living?

Chris Lane:        

I always had an interest in architecture. I'd say that would probably be the Plan B if I've ever had one is doing some type of architectural work.

Dusty Weis:      

So if you weren't tearing stuff up, you'd be building stuff instead.

Chris Lane:        

Correct.

Dusty Weis:      

What was your first job?

Chris Lane:        

My first job, I was actually as labor for the company on one of our developments.

Dusty Weis:      

And what age was that?

Chris Lane:        

I was actually 16.

Dusty Weis:       Getting out there early, man. How about your first car? What were you driving?

Chris Lane:        

My very first car, I'm an avid Ford person. I always preferred Fords and our company's always had a lot of Fords in our fleet. However, my family is a large General Motors family. So my very first car was actually a '72 Chevelle. The car that I still have to this day and it is the one and the only General Motors product that I've ever owned and probably ever will, but it is the first car.

Dusty Weis:      

If you've got a stray from the Ford pack, a '72 Chevelle ain't a bad way to go with that. I bet you a turned a lot of heads driving around in that as a kid.

Chris Lane:        

Yeah, it wasn't nothing special. It had a little small block and an automatic and it wasn't a hot rod, wasn't really a fast car, but it was a comfortable cruiser that I was able to have a lot of fun with.

Dusty Weis:      

So after a long day, what do you do to blow off steam?

Chris Lane:        

At the end of the day most enjoyment I have is interacting with my two daughters. My oldest is three and my youngest is a year old. I find a lot of enjoyment just interacting with them and teaching them things and seeing them develop and grow. Seems like they change so fast.

Dusty Weis:      

That's a good age. I got a 10-month-old myself here and not only is he a lot of fun to hang out with, but he's too young to talk back to me yet. I know that's not going to last forever. What's the longest you've ever owned a pair of work boots?

Chris Lane:        

About five months.

Dusty Weis:      

They don't last very long by you, huh?

Chris Lane:        

Between being in the field, the field's not as hard on them as much as the office is. I walk around the concrete and twist around actually eat that more than being out in the field.

Dusty Weis:      

What's your pump up music when you're headed to work? What do you like to rock out to?

Chris Lane:        

Currently my favorite songs, probably Shotgun by George Ezra. Anything that really has a good beat to it that kind of helps gets me up and going because in the past 27 years, I've never took a liking to coffee. I start my days most times caffeine-free in general, so.

Dusty Weis:      

Well, now you're just talking Greek to me. I can't even fathom that.

Chris Lane:        

I'd like to say it provides me a healthy lifestyle, but my diet's probably not where it should be to accurately say that.

Dusty Weis:      

Well, it's a give and take. Cats or dogs for you?

Chris Lane:        

Definitely dogs.

Dusty Weis:      

What are people always surprised to learn about you?

Chris Lane:        

I'd have to say my age.

Dusty Weis:      

Yeah. I haven't met you in-person, but just talking to you on the phone you sound a lot older than you are, I'll tell you that. If you could have a beer with any three people, who would they be?

Chris Lane:        

Probably one of the lead engineers with Ford over their truck division, a New York architect and Jimmy Buffett.

Dusty Weis:      

Jimmy Buffett really ties that group together, I got to tell you. Last question then. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Chris Lane:        

It has to come from my grandfather. He's given me a lot of advice and it'd be difficult to pick one. He's always given me a lot of good advice, but the one that always resonates a lot, especially in the growth of our business is he always used to tell me to never forget that pigs get fat, hogs get butchered.

Dusty Weis:      

That's a good one. My grandfather gave me some advice once too. He told me, "Now Dusty, you know that traffic lights that are timed out for 35 miles an hour are also timed out for 70 miles an hour." Grandpa was a good influence you might to say. Well, that's everything I got for you. Chris Lane, you're the VP of Ronald Lane, Incorporated located out in Clarksburg, West Virginia. If I want to learn more about you or your business, where can I do it?

Chris Lane:        

Simplest way is probably just go to our website, RLI3.com. Provides all of our contact information, provides a good backstory of our business and a lot of the services that we offer.

Dusty Weis:      

Well, Chris it's been cool talking. Can't wait to see you out at CONEXPO-CON/AGG in 2020. We'll look for you out on the show floor there and look forward to talking to you again. Thanks for joining us on CONEXPO-CON/AGG Radio.

Chris Lane:        

Thank you. Have a good day.

Dusty Weis:      

That's going to wrap up this edition of CONEXPO-CONAG Radio. If you like the show and think other people ought to listen too, make sure to subscribe and maybe leave a review on iTunes. We'll be back soon with another great guest. Until that time, be sure to visit CONEXPO-CON/AGG.com/subscribe to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter. More than 30,000 construction industry pros are already receiving news and insights to move their business forward. Thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.

 

Subscribe to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG 365 weekly newsletter to receive more great stories like this.