815-416-1000UCP Holiday 2019 Newsletter
Wishing all of our customers, industry partners, employees and friends a Happy Holidays and Prosperous New Year! Without your support, 50 years in business would not have been possible, and we sincerely appreciate it!
UCP’s First Christmas
“50 years in 2019! I was in my freshman year coming home for Christmas break in 1969, and my dad told me that he had mortgaged the house and invested everything in starting his own precast company. My first thought was that my college career was over. Then I decided to invest $500 of my hard-earned savings in the new company. I had some work at spring break doing manual labor for a week and then continued laboring for a summer job after freshman year. Illinois Bell, basically our only end-user at that time, went on strike in June and I was out of a job for a month until they went back to work. That was a really hard time for my Dad and the company. Probably the only reason we stayed in business is that our best customer pre-bought a bunch of manholes from us to hold us through. My Dad said he never wanted to get rich. He just wanted to make the best manholes in the country, which we did and continue to do so to this day. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come over the last 50 years.”
-Russ Hawken
The 1970’s
We poured our first 38-Y (12’x6’x7′) manhole for Illinois Bell out of a 60’ x 100’ Morton pole building on five acres of rented space in Naperville selected by our founder, Bill Hawken. The Illinois Bell manholes, used to build our their underground telephone system, were quickly adapted to suit Commonwealth Edison’s underground distribution system, which opened a whole new market to UCP. Additionally, we began to push custom precast products in lieu of cast-in-place concrete, opening opportunities to supply various agencies and other end-users. Marking our beginning as the premier custom precast supplier in the region. Within the first two years in business, our plant burned to the ground overnight. The Hawken family decided that they would not quit, and essentially started over. UCP moved from a small plot in Naperville to a 15-acre site in Plainfield that was equipped with a 10,000 SF crane building. Throughout the 70’s, we added an additional 10,000 SF to the original building along with a batch plant and an additional bridge crane. The company continued to diversify its product offerings in the second half of the decade and began taking on projects for IDOT and the Tollway. By the end of the decade, Russ Hawken had assumed the position of Vice President and General Manager and had positioned the company for continued success into the future.
Stay tuned, as we will be sharing UCP’s past 50 years through “decade” history sections over the coming weeks.
From left: Jamie Hawken, Bill Hawken, Russ Hawken
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