Solid as rock.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Wake Stone Corp. - Company Profile

How does a small, family-owned quarry company compete with giant corporations? It's the pits.

On the floor of the 100-acre pit, Johnny Bratton slows as a quarry truck rumbles by, towering over his Land Rover. Behind him, a granite cliff rises like a canyon wall, and in front, stone terraces turn from gray at the bottom to motley yellow in sunlight at the rim. Wake Stone Corp. began here in Knightdale, just east of the Neuse River, in 1970. "Dad and I were walking, and there were some outcroppings in the fields and along the edge of the woods that indicated rock close to the surface," Bratton says. His father bought the land, and a quarry was born.

Stillborn, almost. His dad, John Bratton Jr., had quit as an engineer and vice president at aggregate producer Martin Marietta Inc. in Raleigh to start the quarry. With only $50,000, he was low on capital. On the road in, Johnny Bratton nods at a restored, three-room tenant house with a red roof and tan paint. "Our first world headquarters."

When Martin Marietta learned of the plans, it quickly reopened a nearby quarry, still remembered at Wake Stone as an attempt to crush Bratton for leaving. "They poured everything they had into it, and we had three guys over here," says his son, who was one of them. "It was pretty demoralizing." He pauses. "But it didn't work."

Nearly three decades later, in an industry in which Vulcan Materials Co., Martin Marietta and Hanson Materials PLC rake in 60 cents of every dollar spent on Tar Heel rock, Wake Stone is the largest independent still standing. It has four quarries, all in North Carolina, which will generate revenue of more than $35 million this year. That makes it the fourth-largest stone company competing in North Carolina but tiny compared with its billion-dollar competitors.

At 52, Johnny Bratton, now CEO, no longer has the mod haircut and college grin of the '70s, when he mugged for a photo with crane operator Frog Burnette. He has the serious demeanor of an engineer and oldest son entrusted with the family business. Grappling with why the company has refused to bow to competition or buyout offers, he recalls those early days. "Maybe being the underdog hasn't been all bad."

At Wake Stone, survival has become corporate culture. The company has to be scrappier and more efficient and make do without. When a quarry manager wants a letter typed, he does it himself. Revenues have more than tripled since 1990, but the work force of 140 is essentially unchanged. Only two executive posts have been added.

In the late afternoon sun, Johnny Bratton stops beneath a five-story rock crusher, fed by miles of conveyor belts loaded at the pit bottom by $600,000 shovels and...