Palmetto Brick Celebrates 100 Years of Operation
by Ardie Arvidson
Palmetto Brick is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Family-owned and -operated since 1919, the brick manufacturing plant is in Wallace with retail showrooms in Florence, Myrtle Beach and locations near Charlotte, North Carolina.
To celebrate its anniversary, the company is hosting events in all of its retail stores. On Thursday, in conjunction with a ribbon cutting for its membership in the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce, Palmetto Brick served lunch at its Florence retail store on Melon Street.
The company was founded by J. L. Anderson in 1919.
Andy Rogers, vice president and a fourth-generation family member to work in the company, said the company was started in Wallace on the Pee Dee River by his great-grandfather.
Rogers said the company is built on “good fortune, good employees and loyal customers.”
Without any one of them, he said, it wouldn’t have lasted 100 years.
“My father or I have been buying brick from Palmetto Brick for over 70 years,” said Bill Segars of Segars Construction Company in Hartsville, who stopped by to congratulate Palmetto Brick on its success and 100 years in business. “From the family ownership, though management, sales and service to the truck drivers; Palmetto Brick has always been a first rate vendor with a quality product. They have a product that we need. We order it, they send it, we pay for it. This type arrangement makes our job in the field much easier.”
“The company continues to learn and grow,” said John Sanderson, Carolina Sales manager. “It takes the whole ball of wax to make a company grow.”
“We have supplied brick for a lot of offices and homes in the area,” Rogers said. “We sell brick in 31 states and Canada.”
The company has 107 employees with six in the Florence office.
The company offers 40 different varieties of brick.
“The most popular right now are the lighter shades of brick,” Rogers said.
For commercial buildings, he said, their best seller is a “true white” brick. He said very few companies can make it.
“We are a green product,” he said. “We take clay out of the ground and burn it with natural gas.”
He said one-third of the company’s electricity comes from a solar farm.
“It is awesome,” he said. “We have been operating with it for close to a year.”
According to the company’s website “Palmetto Brick is the largest family-owned brick maker in South Carolina with a capacity to produce more than 150 million bricks a year. It remains one of only a handful of American-owned and -operated brick manufacturers in the U.S.”
To read the full article on SC Now, click here.
