My grandfather, Harold Reeves, started laying shingles in Hillsborough County in 1961. He was 26 years old, just back from the service, and he figured out quickly that the roofing contractors in Tampa at the time were cutting corners left and right. He decided he could do it better. For the next forty-three years, he did.
My dad, Mike, joined him in 1979 — the summer after high school. He thought it'd be temporary until he figured out what he really wanted to do. He never left. By the time Harold retired in 2004, my dad had already been running the field operations for fifteen years. He ran the business himself for another nine.
I started carrying bundles of shingles up ladders when I was fourteen. By seventeen I was on crews full-time in the summer. I studied business at USF partly because my dad made me, and partly because I knew — even then — that the construction industry needed people who understood both sides of the work. The numbers AND the craft.
When my dad's health started going in 2008, I came home full-time to help him run things. A year later we made the decision together to rebrand as Cornerstone — a fresh start on the business side, but carrying forward everything our family had spent fifty years building. He passed in 2014. I still talk to him before every big decision.
Today, Cornerstone serves the entire Tampa Bay region — from Clearwater to Brandon, Lutz to Apollo Beach. We have twelve full-time employees, three residential crews, and a dedicated commercial team. Every single one of my crew leaders has been with me for at least seven years. A few of them were crew for my dad before they were crew for me.
We do things a little differently than most roofing companies. We don't buy leads from Angi or HomeAdvisor. We don't run door-to-door after storms. We don't have commissioned salespeople pushing you to sign today. We get calls because our neighbors send us — and we intend to keep it that way.
If that sounds like a throwback — good. It is. That's the whole point.
Roofing Contractor