When Earl Johnson’s high school teachers wanted to schedule a parent-teacher conference, they were out of luck. Johnson lived alone, supporting himself by cutting and selling firewood, plowing gardens with a tractor and doing other odd jobs to pay the bills at what was once his family’s weekend home in Blue Ridge, Georgia.
He met Jeff Queen at school, where the two clicked because of their similar backgrounds. Earl was operating a roller in his father’s paving business at the age of 8 and Jeff grew up around farm tractors, often accompanying his dad on large mowing jobs.
At 27 years old, the friends seem young to be running a paving company with an annual volume of $3.7 million and 16 employees. But they’ve been working at it longer than most people suspect. “I’ve done this all my life,” Johnson says. “This was all I knew.” And it was the only career he envisioned for himself. His dad would take him to work with him some days instead of to school. “He took so much pride in having a son who wanted to do what he did,” Johnson says.
Both Queen and Johnson say they were raised “old school,” with a strong work ethic. “We pride ourselves in knowing we got ourselves here,” Queen says.
Johnson originally moved to Blue Ridge from Jonesboro, Georgia, near Atlanta, with his parents. His father owned a paving company and had done a few jobs in the small town in preparation for relocating his business as well as his family. But Johnson’s dad suffered a fatal heart attack three days after the family’s move. His mother decided to sell the paving company and move back to Jonesboro, while Johnson chose to stay in Blue Ridge. He says he saw a potential for growth in the tiny town nestled in the north Georgia mountains that didn’t exist in already-developed suburban Atlanta.
Johnson started Johnson Paving when he was 18 with a $15,000 loan. “And the bank was really worried about that,” he says, laughing. With the money he bought a $7,000 paver and a $7,500 roller. Then he began paving driveways with the help of Queen, who had a skid steer and did site preparation and landscaping work while attending Southern Polytechnic. He eventually left college to go into business with Johnson full time.
One of the biggest hurdles the two had to overcome early on was their age. “Everyone wanted to know if we knew what we were doing,” Johnson says. While the firm soon developed a reputation for high-quality, on-schedule work, new customers still approach the owners wanting to know where to find Mr. Johnson.
