Stephens Manufacturing isn’t going anywhere. The business has been located in Tompkinsville, Kentucky since it was founded by Bill Stephens in 1957. Bill’s son Max, the current president and CEO, has memories of trekking over to the nearby plant as a child. And company tall-tales say that Bill created his first silo by bending steel around an old oak tree.
In reality, Bill Stephens started as a local ready mix producer, then moved into manufacturing silos to store his own bulk cement.  He then began building conveyors and aggregate bins to go along with the silos, and eventually offered a complete concrete batch plant.
Today, the company has a 141,000 square foot state-of-the-art manufacturing plant, and the equipment produced by Stephens Manufacturing has made it into one of the world’s premier manufacturers of Concrete Batch Plants. Stephens now ships plants all over North and South America, the Caribbean, and even to Africa.  Though times are tougher now than they have been, Max has kept his company strong by sticking to values that have always held the company in good stead: creating quality products, offering good prices, and ensuring outstanding service. When the market turns again, he says, they’ll “be ready for the boom.”
Max worked for most of his life to help build the company that he leads today. He’s come a long way since he used to wander over to the plant as a child from the family home nearby, but even then he was absorbing his father’s way of treating people, both employees and customers. That tradition remains strong--a “treat others like you want to be treated” attitude has ensured repeat business, and helped the Stephens’ name and reputation to increase their market share each year. After attending their first trade show in 1976, business exploded. The company developed a special niche in building dry batch concrete plants, customized to the client’s needs. Max says one key to Stephens’ success is this attention to detail that his father instilled: “Don’t build two plants alike.  Everyone wants it different.”
Bill Stephens turned the business over to sons, Tommy and Max, in the mid 1980’s, though they were already full-time employees. Tommy assumed the role of president and CEO, while Max held the position of vice president. Max makes it clear that Tommy laid the groundwork for leading the company to new heights, and he felt honored and prepared to take over after Tommy’s untimely death in 2004.
Max has been committed to keeping the family ideals and dreams alive. The company now has 83 employees, slightly fewer than in recent years, but Max notes with pride that many of the people his father hired are still with the company. Most of the core team, still in place, worked closely with his brother for years.
Stephens now creates about $25 million each year in revenue, and leads the industry in working with several innovative ideas: increasing truck loading efficiency, and implementing new methods of reclaiming and recycling concrete and slurry. Max keeps business diverse in these tougher economic times, ensuring that Stephens Manufacturing is never in the position of having one customer account for more than 10 percent of the company’s business, guarding against having “all the eggs in one basket,” as he puts it.
Stephens is currently constructing a new 8,000 plus square-foot building, which will improve efficiency and allow for an increase in parts supply and service.  The new plant is one aspect of the company’s continuing drive to grow. In keeping with the new speed of business, Max computerized portions of the company in order to speed up production, and constructed a new facility across the road from the original plant for inventory control and in order to meet increasing demand. All of this change has a high price tag, but has resulted in great strides for Stephen’s Manufacturing.
In fact, the company has grown 200 percent in revenue over the last five years. Max never loses sight of the other important types of building they do: building relationships with suppliers and customers. Max notes that good relationships with suppliers have been a key to Stephens’ success over the years: “[It’s] important to have those relationships.  [They are like] a family, they take care of me and I take care of them.”
One project of recent note is the work Stephens did for Rinker, a major world corporation in the concrete business industry. Stephens custom built dry batch concrete plants for Rinker, and supplied them with equipment and materials.
Max sees more growth ahead: he anticipates 10 percent growth each year over the next five years.  With the new facilities completed, the company’s physical capacity will be 50 percent larger.  Despite now being a world leader in their business, Stephens Manufacturing is still connected to its small home town of 3,000 people and three street lights.  Stephens recently celebrated their 50th year in business, and looks forward to celebrating many more landmark anniversaries in the years to come.