Family business helps build a region

Waldorf-based company delivers ready-mix concrete, gravel, stone

As a kid, Francis “Hall” Chaney III liked playing with dirt.

That hasn’t changed for the 34-yearold president of Chaney Enterprises, a Waldorf-based supplier of ready-mix concrete, sand, gravel, stone, blended soils and other construction materials.

“We grow up, and people tell us that’s not the type of job we should have,” Chaney said. “First of all, that’s insane. I’m proud to say we have some of the highest-paying jobs in Maryland.

“I would also tell you,” he added, “it’s downright fun.”

When Chaney’s grandfather, Eugene Chaney, founded the firm in 1962, it was a small Southern Maryland supplier of sand, gravel and concrete. In the last nearly six decades, Chaney Enterprises has expanded its products and its reach: It now employs 600 workers — 500 of them Marylanders — at 37 locations.

Chaney, a Key School and University of Maryland graduate, grew up around the business and worked there during college, but his father never pressured him to join. After a stint at a contracting company, he returned to Chaney Enterprises in 2006, working for a decade in various roles in land development, operations and sales before being promoted to executive vice president, and then president.

“Our industry breeds a deep commitment, because it is really hard work,” he said. “We’re selling perishable product, mobile-ly manufacturing a perishable product that will literally harden in our trucks if we don’t deliver it in a certain amount of time.”

The company mines its raw materials, then transports them, mostly by truck, to construction sites across the Mid-Atlantic region.

In 2015, Chaney Enterprises began moving materials by barge to sites such as the Tradepoint Atlantic redevelopment in southeast Baltimore County’s Sparrows Point, the longtime home of a now-demolished steel mill.

Last year, the company expanded its facility in Waldorf and opened a railroad between there and Northwest Virginia.

It isn’t the sexiest of industries, he said, but it carries a lot of pride for those who work in it.

“When you do what we do, you can touch it,” Chaney said. “You can point to it and say to your son or daughter ... I was involved in delivering the product that built that structure.”