In 2000, the Davis H. Elliot Company was at a crossroads. The 54-year-old electrical contracting business, founded in Roanoke, Virginia, with headquarters today on Blue Sky Parkway in Lexington, had no clear succession plan. Bill Elliot owned 100 percent of the company’s stock, but no one in his family was interested in running the business.
There were numerous offers to buy the company, but Elliot thought about his employees.
Keith Simpson
“He said it wouldn’t feel right selling the company to a strategic buyer,” said Keith Simpson, now senior vice president at Elliot. “Yes, he would have gotten a big check, but the first thing that [likely] would happen is that the people who had worked so hard to build the business would stop getting profit-sharing and the benefits they had enjoyed.”
Instead, Elliot sold the company to its employees through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Twenty-four years later, Elliot is 100 percent employee-owned. The company had taken on ten years of debt to make this happen, but it was paid off ahead of schedule.
Looking back at the company’s early years, Davis Elliot started working with Appalachian Power Company in Virginia in 1946 with one crew and one truck. Two years later, he got his first job in Kentucky, stringing electrical lines across a river near Maysville. By 1950, there was an office in Lexington, and Elliot received substantial work from Kentucky Utilities, LG&E, and cooperatives like East Kentucky Power, performing infrastructure work on electrical transmission, distribution, and substations.
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Founded as an electrical contractor in 1946, the Davis H. Elliot Company has grown into an employee-owned business, now offering a wide range of services.
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Founded as an electrical contractor in 1946, the Davis H. Elliot Company has grown into an employee-owned business, now offering a wide range of services.
Elliot’s expansion evolved in relation to its customers’ needs. An example is the 1998 Nashville tornado. “When there are storms, we’re one of the first calls for most utilities,” Simpson said. Elliot still works in Nashville, 26 years after the disaster. Today, Elliot’s footprint ranges from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Oklahoma City to Baltimore.
The company continues to grow through a family of related brands.
Elliot Services, a Kentucky-based contractor, was created to meet the demand for residential and commercial electrical services. Today, the contractor specializes in all types of residential work, commercial and industrial projects, and voice and data communications.
The company 46 Solutions emerged from the need to deliver safety information and training to Elliot crews in the field. With more than a thousand employees spread across a wide area, Elliot stopped mailing materials and instead shipped every crew member an iPad for training and communication. These services have since expanded to serve dispersed teams in other fields.
Another service line, Studio 46, came about in a similar way. Its teams create and send leadership and safety videos, including in on-demand scenarios. For example, a recall for a specific nut and bolt used in crane trucks that lift heavy power poles prompted the creation of a customized safety video. The video was quickly sent to hundreds of crew members in 17 states, enabling them to identify affected trucks and take them out of service.
More recently, Elliot acquired Wells Engineering, based in Florence, Kentucky, to form Elliot Engineering, which offers procurement and delivery services.
UDP, which stands for utility damage protection, is a locating service offered by Elliot. It responds to 811 calls from homeowners and businesses needing underground utility lines marked before excavation.
Elliot also contracts out traffic controllers — the people in the yellow vests with flags and signs who set up construction barrels and manage traffic around work sites — to other entities in the construction industry.
Expanding and diversifying Elliot’s service lines also helps with recruiting, training, and retaining employees, Simpson said.
Interest in skilled trades is declining, according to experts. Gen Z, typically defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, is on track to become the most educated generation in history. Yet, fewer young people are opting to pursue traditional hands-on jobs in skilled trades and technical fields.
The recruiting platform Handshake reported that applications for jobs in construction, plumbing, and electrical work dropped by 49 percent in 2022, compared to 2020.
Many of the current technicians who currently work in the skilled trade have either retired or will be retiring soon, and there’s widespread concern that there are not enough qualified applicants to replace them.
However, experts emphasize that many skilled trade jobs offer competitive pay, especially compared to other positions available to those without a college degree.
Simpson acknowledges that it is harder to find skilled tradespeople today. Unlike in the past, many prefer not to stay with one company long-term. By offering various career paths — including IT, video production, and outdoor utility work — employees can develop their skills through apprenticeships and are encouraged to advance in their careers.
“What we look for are people who want to invest in their future,” Simpson said. “That’s what we want to provide. They can own the business while building their careers.”