Florida Rock Industries, whose origins stretch back nearly 100 years, emerged in the 20th century as one of the nation’s largest producers of construction aggregates and concrete products.

A number of Baker family members were central over the years to the growth of Florida Rock, which ultimately sold in 2007. Perhaps the most prominent figure in the company’s rise was Edward L. “Ted” Baker, who served Florida Rock in several leadership capacities across four decades.

John D. Baker II, who served Florida Rock as president and CEO in the company’s final years, characterizes his older brother as one of the smartest people he’s ever met.

“Intuitively, he had great judgment about making moves,” John says. “He was an amazing people person. Even when we had 10 or 15 plants, he knew most of the workers in the plant. They all adored him.”

Ted served Florida Rock in capacities such as president, CEO and chairman, taking an enterprise established by his father during the Great Depression and expanding its reach tremendously across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.

“He was instrumental in taking the company public and instrumental in its growth,” says Ted Baker II, nephew of the Hall of Fame inductee who served as CEO of Bluegrass Materials before it officially sold in 2018 to Martin Marietta. “He spent his whole career there and grew it from a little company to a pretty large public company when it sold in 2007.”

Although Vulcan Materials purchased Florida Rock that year in a deal valued at more than $4 billion, Ted had long since diversified his company and grown it through a number of strategic acquisitions and a highly calculated plan.

The Bakers in business

Still, Florida Rock would not have come to be had Ted’s father, Thompson S. Baker, not gone into the sand business near Gainesville, Florida, in 1929.

According to John, their father (Thompson) started a business that year. Along with Jim Shands, a business partner, the company Shands & Baker was formed. 

The breakout of World War II pulled Thompson away from the business during the war years, John says. But Shands & Baker started over after the war, purchasing its first crushed stone plant in 1948 near Brooksville, Florida.

By the 1960s, John says his older brother (Ted) emerged as a prominent figure in the Shands & Baker business.

“When he was 28, my dad made him president of the company,” John says. “We had a rock quarry and a couple of sand plants at that point.”

It was also clear by the time Ted was president that he and his father employed different tactics for running the business.

“My dad and brother were different as night and day,” John says. “My dad grew up in the [Great] Depression. He’d seen his father go broke when nobody could pay him. He abhorred debt. To grow like we did through acquisitions, you had to take on some debt.

“My dad was very conservative,” John adds, “whereas my brother was a mover and shaker.”

Titan of industry

As John further describes, Ted “single-handedly built” the Florida Rock business and took the company public in 1972.

“There were some greenfields, but almost all of the growth was through acquisitions,” John says. “He really built it up until he turned it over to me in the late 1990s.”

According to John, Ted recognized the need early on for the company to become vertically integrated in order to effectively compete. And that’s the direction Ted took the company.

“In the 1960s, Florida was becoming vertically integrated,” John says. “Our biggest competitors all had both ready-mix and aggregates. So we really had to go into the ready-mix business just to make sure we had customers.”

In 1972, following the merger of several old, established concrete companies into Shands & Baker, the name of the corporation was changed to Florida Rock Industries. The Shands & Baker Division was incorporated into an aggregates group.

In 1978, Florida Rock purchased three granite quarries in Georgia and a dolomitic limestone quarry in Gulf Hammock, Florida, from Dixie Lime & Stone Co., a subsidiary of Rosario Resources Corp. The acquisition marked the company’s entry into the Atlanta and Macon, Georgia, aggregate markets, as well as the agricultural limestone business in Florida and southern Georgia. 

“As he was getting the company going, those were really the big acquisitions for us that spread us out throughout the Southeast,” John says.

Ted guided Florida Rock into the Tampa, Florida, ready-mix market with a new plant and delivery fleet in 1978. Other projects that year included the completion of a quarry in Fort Myers, Florida, and the modernization and expansion of facilities in Rome, Georgia.

By the end of 1980, Florida Rock had 39 ready-mix plants in operation and a fleet of 424 mixer trucks in service. The company had a variety of ready-mix plants in Virginia and Washington, D.C., by then, as well.

As described in Pit & Quarry’s September 1981 edition, Florida Rock had built or acquired five construction minerals plants each year since 1975, expanding and upgrading its quarries and truck fleets while entering new markets in aggregates and concrete through acquisitions.

Keep in mind, though, that Ted not only had the vision to set Florida Rock on a rapid path to growth, but he endeared himself to his employees who delivered on his plans for each individual operation.

“There was an amazing amount of loyalty to our family created by him, just with him being the guy that he is,” John says of Ted. “He was a remarkable salesman in every use of the word. Not only could he sell rock, but he could sell himself and make people want to do business for him.”