The Mother Tucker

This day in 1996, 3 founders jumped into the consolidation game. Houston had a reputation for these overnight consolidations, roll-ups or 'poof-deals' as they were known. This was because they popped up almost over night. From garbage collection and food distribution to buses and taxis, it seemed like everything was getting 'rolled up'. I could barely spell the word consolidation and I knew even less about buying companies. 

Our little 'roll-up that could' began at the kitchen table. We named it Group Maintenance America Corp, but everybody just called us GroupMAC. Our first acquisitions I found by calling local air conditioning contractors, from the Yellow Pages. (What I wouldn't have done for a couple hours on Linkedin back then). We closed our first 12 deals all on the same day. It was also the day of our NYSE initial public offering. 'Poof', we were a $1 billion company in one year.

With fresh gas (cash) in the tank, we went on a 4-year buying spree. We bought companies from $2 million to $250 million and well over 200 in all. After 4 years all of the 'platform' companies that could be bought, had been bought. By that time our fleet of 10,000 service trucks was rolling in over 250 US markets. Any remaining acquisition targets had numerous bidders and prices were sky high.

Thats when I developed a specialty for the 'tuck-ins'. I was able to buy a bunch of smaller firms at much lower multiples of earnings. These could be easily 'tucked' into a platform company as incremental revenue and earnings, with little to no overhead. Get the integration right and they were the most profitable of any businesses we bought. My CFO dubbed me the Mother-Tucker. By the time I left, Encompass Services Corp had rolled-up more than 36,000 employees and over $4 billion in annual sales.