Freehold man ditches cubicle for roofs
His business takes on jobs big, small
FREEHOLD - Growing up in Freehold, Joe Richmond loved being outside. And that affinity for the outdoors, combined with his background in construction, ultimately led to the successful launch of his Freehold-based company Joe the Roofer, which has been specializing in residential and commercial roofing and other exterior services since 2015.
“My brothers and I were all very outdoorsy as kids and I gravitated towards working locally and outside as we got older,” said Richmond, 41, a Freehold resident. “For a while after high school, I worked for an engineering company, but I couldn’t stand sitting in a cubicle all day.
“One of my friends’ fathers owned a gutter business and that’s where I got my start in construction.”
Throughout his 20s and early 30s, “I worked in different aspects of the trades, from roofing and siding to windows, doors, gutters, decking and HVAC,” Richmond said. “Doing all of that enabled me to pull from those different experiences and understand how the various systems of a house worked.”
For Richmond, starting his own company was inevitable.
“No matter where I worked, I often ended up running the jobs and taking on the brunt of them, so owning my own business was a natural next step,” he said of the launch of Joe the Roofer.
According to Richmond, his company name came from the fact that, “while I’d worked in a lot of different trades throughout my career, I noticed that many customers put me in their cell phone as ‘Joe the Roofer,’ ” he said. “I went with it and decided to focus on roofing and related aspects of exterior construction.”
“So many companies are too focused on the money first and their quality suffers,” he noted. “An industry colleague once told me that success would follow if I concentrated on the quality of my work, so our team has always been focused on delivering the best-quality result for homeowners.”
‘You really have to know what you’re doing’
Eight years later, “we’re a full-service exterior contractor that offers a broad range of residential and commercial roofing services along with siding, windows, gutters, entry doors, leak repairs and more — everything on the outside of the home or building,” Richmond said.
“A lot of our customers are in Monmouth County and Central Jersey, but that’s expanding daily,” he continued. “We’ve gotten calls from as far north as Morris County and as far south as Camden County and will travel throughout the state.”
According to Richmond, the time required for a roofing job — and its resultant price — depend on the size and complexity of the project.
“We’ve done jobs ranging from $250 to over six figures and everything in between,” said Richmond, who defines a small roof as under 2,000 square feet in size, an average roof as 2,000 to 4,000 square feet, a large roof as 4,000 to 6,000 square feet, and an extra-large roof as anything above that.
“We’ve had every experience, from the easiest to the hardest, and roofs can be like onions in that you can start peeling off old shingles and find all sorts of layers underneath,” he said.
“We recently did a church with a very steep roof in Spring Lake that ended up having five layers of shingles, which was a very difficult job that took a lot of time and manpower. The easier roofs are two sides, up and over,” he said, “but older properties and larger, custom-built homes with a lot of architectural facets, turns and valleys are more intricate, so you really have to know what you’re doing.”
While a roof’s size, grade and degree of custom tailoring will affect turnaround time, “we run several crews to support all of the different options we offer,” said Richmond, who typically deploys a five- to six-person crew to replace an average-size roof and as many as 15 to 20 crew members on larger jobs.
“It’s about getting the old roof off and the new one on as quickly as possible to reduce the exposure time,” he explained. “We’re very efficient and can complete in one day a job that might take another company two or three days to finish.”
Joe noted that quality and speed are also important because roofing jobs can be anxiety-inducing for customers.
“Most homeowners don’t know what’s involved in a roofing project, so we try to educate them on what to expect, including sending them a letter in advance with all of the details,” Richmond
said. “These are big jobs that create a lot of debris and we understand that they can be stressful for people, but we assure customers of a great cleanup that will leave as small a footprint as possible.”
Within the industry, Richmond said roofing systems have gotten better over time thanks to advancements such as composite underlayments between plywood and shingles, improved ice and water shield technology and a better understanding of the science of ventilation and the need to let attics breathe to avoid trapping the humidity that can cause rot and mold to develop.
“In addition, the life expectancy of shingles has increased from 20 years a few decades ago to as much as 50 years today, as long as they’re installed properly,” he said. “Our team is very careful to follow each manufacturer’s directions so that homeowners can access manufacturer warranties and avoid any issues or additional costs related to the installation.”
As for challenges, he said that weather remains a perennial issue.
“We watch the weather closely every day because we have to; we’re not opening a roof if there’s a chance of inclement weather that could risk someone’s home, threaten our crew members’ safety or damage shingles,” Richmond said.
On the sales side, there’s also the challenge of dealing with homeowners who are less than excited about the prospect of a roof replacement.
“Replacing a roof is a big-ticket, ‘have-to-do’ project — not a ‘want-todo’ project like a kitchen or bathroom, which people will enjoy after its done,” Richmond acknowledged, “but it’s a huge system that protects everything on the inside of the house, so it’s an important investment.
“Unfortunately, some people think that all roofers and roofing products are the same,” he said. “Homeowners have to be careful about that because there are providers out there who don’t use quality or up-to-date technology or else take shortcuts in installation, though at the same time you don’t want to be oversold either.”
Richmond recommends that homeowners maintain their roofs, get a roof inspection every couple of years, and do their own research on current materials and providers when the time comes for replacement.
‘We’re in this business for the long haul’
Looking ahead, “I hope to continue growing the business at a healthy rate while ensuring top quality and expanding the other home exterior services we provide,” said Richmond, who oversees company operations, assists with scheduling, and travels to jobs to diagnose roof repairs.
“Having grown up here, we’re also proud to continue supporting our local community,” he said. Among recent projects, “we were honored to put a new roof on the Freehold Borough Little League concession stand and to be asked to participate in the construction of a home for a local veteran sponsored by the Tunnels to Towers Foundation.
“Ultimately, we’re a high-production company that offers a superior product and process, but we still try to make projects as affordable for customers as we can,” Richmond said. “We’re in this business for the long haul and are known for our honesty and fairness. There’s a package for everyone and we try to make things as easy, stress-free, and financially accessible for people as possible.”
Among his favorite parts of the job, “I love our amazing team members, who align themselves with our company’s core values and enable us to hit our goals,” Richmond said.
“It’s also extremely rewarding that people let us into their homes and trust us with their largest, most personal investment; it’s a big thing that we take a lot of pride in. I truly enjoy the homeowners we get to work with,” he concluded, “and their dogs are a plus too!”