Strong work ethic foundation of company’s legacy
Kevin Camp, second-generation owner of Camp Precast Concrete Products, grew up on Lake Champlain in New York with his two brothers, Earl and Patrick, and his parents, Dale and Mary. They lived on what Kevin refers to as a gentleman’s farm — a farm for pleasure rather than for profit. The family raised beef and other livestock and had a large garden filled with fruit and vegetables. The Camp kids learned to tend the farm and property.
“My dad just taught us a good work ethic,” Kevin said. “We had to work and work, and he instilled that in us.”
Once Kevin’s father started his precast business, the Camp kids were there to help every step of the way.
Dale would bring Kevin and his two brothers along to help with whatever was needed. Every summer, they would take on more responsibilities.
“By the time we were 12, we were down here cutting wire for reinforcement cages and stuff,” Kevin said. “And every summer, even throughout college, we would work even more than we did last summer.”
Kevin uses those early lessons every day running Camp Precast, but he did not learn them overnight. Many years working on the farm and at Camp Precast led him to where he is now – Chair of the National Precast Concrete Association and continuing his parents’ legacy at Camp Precast.
IN THE BEGINNING
In 1968, Dale and Mary started Camp Precast at their home in Montgomery, Vermont, selling septic tanks and other on-site wastewater products.
Dale was working as a local bricklayer, which is where he first discovered the business of precast. While on a project, he noticed that an adjacent building belonged to a precaster who was selling septic tanks and that the precaste was behind on production. Dale thought maybe this business was something he should get into because there was a demand for this product and not enough distributors.
“So that’s how we started,” Kevin said. “We had an old dairy barn that was tore down. The barn itself was gone, and all that was left was the floor and basically just a concrete slab.”
Kevin’s father worked off just that concrete slab, setting out the molds and then getting them ready for delivery in the morning.
“My mother also helped a ton, too,” Kevin said. “All while watching two toddlers, which is not easy I might add.”
His mother would go out with the ready-mix concrete and pour and vibrate tanks.
Kevin recalls how it was a whole family effort that, from a very young age, included him and his brothers. The Camp boys would all set up forms, strip, deliver and whatever else their parents needed help with.
“I was mostly the guy in the plant,” Kevin said. “My brother, Earl, was more of the delivery focus. I didn’t care for that much. I liked to be hands-on.”
In 1970, the Camp Family moved their plant to Milton, Vermont, where Camp Precast still operates.
According to Kevin, the move was a huge deal for his parents.
There weren’t many septic tank options in the 1970s. Dale realized that precast concrete products would be in demand before the competition.
“That’s how we kind of got into the precast market,” Kevin said. “Back then, there was very little other than just your traditional leach fields, just gravity fed from a simple tank into some pipe in the ground, or most of them actually went into what was called a drywell or cistern or something.”
Camp Precast would sell a tank and a drywell, and it just went from there. That’s how the company expanded its market into what it is now.
“Although I was able to grow the business, I could have never started or grown the business to what my father did before I took over,” Kevin said.
THE TAKEOVER
Kevin started running Camp Precast in 1992, a few years before he and Patrick officially bought the business from Dale and Mary in 1996. The brothers hoped to carry on the vision their father had, and they did just that. Camp Precast eventually expanded into an even bigger market.
The company shifted to more stormwater-based projects and began to work with both Vermont and New York.
“We mostly do municipal projects. We do state projects for the Agency of Transportation for the state of Vermont and for the Department of Transportation for New York state,” Kevin said.
In 2005, Patrick made the difficult decision to leave the family business. Travis Brousseau became part-owner and general manager.
“Travis handles more of the day-to-day operations but has been a huge help when I need to step away from the company, like attend board meetings and things like that,” Kevin said.
Under Kevin and Brousseau’s ownership, the plant was renovated in February 2017 to house the latest technologies and make room for larger projects. Up until then, the plant building was one of the originals where Dale and Mary housed Camp Precast for more than 40 years.
One of Camp Precast’s buildings from 1974 included a crane that originally served a far different purpose.
“The original overhead crane that [my parents] got actually came from an old ice shack where they used to cut and store ice off Lake Champlain,” Kevin said.
Dale and Mary used as many resources as they could to help create the foundation for Camp Precast.
“It was a steel-framed building, so they had to lay block up along the outside of it, which they hired a contractor to do, who was an old friend of my father’s when he was growing up and that’s kind of how we got the first building going.”
Although the original Camp Precast buildings housed many memories, the renovation of the new building in 2017 marked the beginning of a new era.
ALWAYS CHANGING
Camp Precast is second-generation owned, but there are three generations currently working at Camp Precast – Kevin, his son and his grandchildren.
Kevin knew he was destined to work with precast. Apart from wanting to take after his father and expanding on his vision, Kevin sees precast as a rewarding field and Camp Precast is to thank for that.
“I have so many people that have been a huge help here at Camp Precast,” Kevin said. “I really enjoy working with our customers and our employees. I’ve known a lot of our employees for a long time. They have really been dedicated to Camp Precast, and I really appreciate that.”
Seeing the physical precast product is rewarding as well.
“I think the biggest thing is that you can see something you made,” Kevin said. “You drive around town or see your products in the field or on the road.”
However, there is much changing both within the company and within the precast concrete industry.
With so much changing day-to-day, Kevin says that it’s hard to have a set-in-stone plan when it comes to the future of the Camp Precast.
“Everything is changing constantly,” Kevin said. “Our business is changing inthat our primary precast products have shifted to much bigger stormwater-based products. We’ve lost tenure employees. There is just a lot up in the air.”
What’s not going to be changing anytime soon is Kevin’s dedication and appreciation for precast.
“It’s just nice to know that you are contributing to and can see that your products are contributing to local infrastructure,” Kevin said. “It just makes me feel good.”