by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Dropping out of school in the 9th grade doesn’t come highly recommended. But, for J.B. Coxwell, the decision has worked out pretty well.
Coxwell was born in southern Alabama in 1939. He grew up on a farm and despite having a beautiful 9th grade teacher, Coxwell couldn’t stop staring out the window at the trucks passing by.
“She said, ‘You have got to buckle down and do your schoolwork,’ I said, no I think I want to quit school and be a truck driver,” explained Coxwell, adding the teacher sympathized some, but stressed the need to at least be able to read the road signs.
That teacher is 89 years old these days and Coxwell recently called her with a message.
“I told her, ‘Do you remember making that statement?’ She said yes. I told her, ‘I never learned to read those road signs, so I built them,’” he said.
Today, Coxwell is the chairman of the board of J.B. Coxwell Contracting Inc. and his company is in the process of building much of Northeast Florida. What started as a one-man company with $5,000 in 1983 has grown into a 500-person, $150 million company with a sprawling 30-acre campus on the Westside.
Coxwell’s company doesn’t build Jacksonville’s buildings or neighborhoods. He installs the infrastructure that makes those buildings and neighborhoods possible. You’ve driven his roads on the way to work. You’ve parked on his lots at Target, Home Depot and other retail outlets. Your kids play at his parks and you have electricity and running water in your home thanks to his company’s underground utilities.
“We are a complete site construction manager,” said Coxwell. “We do heavy clearing, road building, some bridge work and we are getting into disaster recovery work. We are in the business of making money. If it’s not illegal, fattening or immoral, we’ll do it.”
J.B. Coxwell is the classic entrepreneur who took advantage of every job and he had to learn everything he could. More than anything, he loves to go to work. He did retire once — in 1997 — for four days.
“I couldn’t stand it,” he said.
In 1997, Coxwell thought he wanted to retire to his 1,000-acre ranch in Central Florida. He sold the company to Superfos, a Dutch company that sold Coxwell’s company to Ashland Oil Co. Within days, Coxwell realized he’d made a mistake.
“I just went crazy,” he said. “My wife was saying, ‘Do this, do that.’ I said, I have got to get out of here. So I went to work for the State (of Florida).”
Three years later, Coxwell repurchased his company and started expanding. In 2003, he lured Sam Mousa from City Hall to serve as his executive vice president. Mousa had worked with Coxwell many times over the years and watched nearly first-hand as APAC — a subsidiary of Ashland that ran the construction side of Coxwell’s former company — struggled to maintain the Coxwell standard, according to Mousa.
“They couldn’t run the company,” said Mousa. “They begged J.B. to take over.”
Mousa is back in the private sector after nearly two decades with the City. The move has proven beneficial to both Mousa and Coxwell Contracting. He no longer sports a coat and tie and Coxwell Contracting has grown three-fold since Mousa joined the firm.
“When I hired Sam in August of 2003, we were a $50 million company. Today, we are a $150 million to $175 million company and he’s a big part of it,” said Coxwell.
“It’s a team effort,” said Mousa, quickly.
In fact, the two are close and often seem to finish each other’s thoughts.
“We have built one of the greatest teams,” said Coxwell. “I attribute that to my son who has been good at picking out young talent. David (president of the company) brought in Sam.”
“He’s smart like his daddy,” said Mousa.
Coxwell may not have finished high school, but he was young and talented enough to be noticed by those he worked for over the years. In 1956 he was a laborer in Clearwater pulling cable through a swamp while up to his waist in water and muck. Four years later, he found himself in on the ground floor of the Jacksonville Interstate highway system.
“I was making $1.50 and hour where I was and the federal government was paying $2.45 an hour up here. That’s a big increase,” said Coxwell, who was an operator when the original construction of the Jacksonville portion of I-95 began. “I was a heavy equipment operator. I ran bulldozers, back hoes, graters, anything.”
In 1983, Coxwell formed River City Grading and Paving. However, there was another company with a very similar name. The similarities weren’t a problem until Coxwell got a notice to appear in court for something the other company was responsible for. Coxwell changed the name of his company, but made the other guy atone for the potential damage to Coxwell’s reputation.
“I made him take out an ad on the front page of the Times-Union,” said Coxwell. “If they didn’t, I was going to file a lawsuit and tear their (butts) up.”
J.B. Coxwell may be one of the easiest going people around. He’s open about his past, humble about his success and a gracious Southern gentleman and businessman. He’s also very proud. Proud of his company’s growth. Proud of the work they do. Proud of the people he brings in. He’s proud of his high employee retention rate and his company’s deep desire to do good work that’s on time and on budget.
“We have never been late. We have never been sued. And, we have never sued anyone,” said Coxwell, proudly.
Coxwell’s newest project — as Mousa puts it “his baby” — is his two disaster recovery command centers. Over the past few years, Coxwell has helped much of the state clean up from the hurricanes that have battered Florida. What he realized in seeing the devastation first-hand was that Jacksonville needed something in case it took a direct hit from a Category 3 or larger storm. The command centers have international communications capabilities and full living quarters.
“It’s been 40 years since we’ve seen a strong wind around here. They (City officials) haven’t seen what I’ve seen,” said Coxwell. “If a Category 3 storm hit here, 40 percent of the housing would be gone because of the trees that would fall on them. We did a model of a Category 3 storm hitting here. There would be a line of debris down St. Johns Bluff Road as high as this building and you’d be able to walk across the Intracoastal Waterway because of the amount of sand in it.”
For all his success today, Coxwell has his past to thank.
“Yes, I wish I had my education. Everybody should have an education,” he said. “But, I can’t say I would have done any better with one. I am successful because I was willing to work and do what it takes. I got smart by watching the big companies and seeing who they hire.”
Mousa said, “I like to quote him: ‘He knew what he knew, knew what he didn’t know and knew enough to hire the people that knew.’ He’s the classic on-the-job-training.”
“I learn something every day,” said Coxwell.