Two Hard Seasons - Lee Russell

BY JOE TRUSTY

Photos: Jimi Smith Photography

Baton Rouge pool builder Lee Russell and his family have been building pools for three generations. As such, they’ve garnered a lot of respect in the industry as well as within their own community. In Baton Rouge, Russell Pool Company has established themselves as one of the top pool construction firms in town.

Although Russell’s expertise in pool construction is in higher demand than ever before, the last two years certainly haven’t been without its challenges. Simply finishing the pools while waiting for essential materials has been a series of hurdles for the Baton Rouge builder who explained to us that just about every single material that he orders is taking weeks longer than it normally would to arrive.

“As far as materials go, I think it’s worse today than it was a year ago,” said Russell, “I’ve got Poolcorp lagging behind getting their orders in from manufacturers for equipment. “I’ve got one pool where I’ve got the coping on but the deck is not finished, but they’re swimming,” said Russell. “We get a lot of pressure from our clients. Something that used to take me 6-8 weeks to finish now I’m looking at 10-12 and that makes it tough. You don’t want to lie to your clients.”

Russell said explaining to customers the logistical issues that builders are facing with getting materials is paramount. He’s been letting clients know that their pool is going to take longer to complete, that some materials may be unavailable and that what items are available may cost more. Undoubtedly, this has produced some hard conversations, not just for Russell but for thousands of builders in a similar predicament.

We asked about the ongoing labor shortages many have faced last year and wanted to know if this was still an issue for his company this year.

“When you can stay at home and not have to work and still pull a check, man there’s a lot of folks that don’t want to work. I’m not sure I want those people working for me. Skilled labor is tough.” said Russsell, sighing. “You used to be able to find guys that were willing to work. Now you’re lucky to get a crew of 3 or 4 guys together that are doing all the work. I don’t know if that’s going to get better.”

The weather has also been a big challenge for the builder this season. Louisiana was recently hit by Hurricane Ida causing catastrophic damage to many of the pools under construction for hundreds of builders throughout the region.

Predicting labor and material shortages has been hard enough. Trying to be a prognosticator of the weather is nearly impossible for even the best pool companies.

“I’ve got one eye on my crews and the other eye on the weather channel. If I were to pull a job crew every time the weatherman said 60% chance of rain; that’s half the days in the calendar and I’d never get anything done,” said Russell.

We asked Russell how he’s able to prevail in such daunting conditions where builders typically may spend half of the day mucking a pool out before they can even get their day started.

Read the entire article on Pool Magazine