Jones Welding and Industrial Supply provides everything ‘from beginning to end’ for welding
Jones Welding and Industrial Supply, based in Albany, has a total of 10 locations in Georgia and Florida
By Jennifer Parks
ALBANY — Jones Welding and Industrial Supply got its start more than three decades ago when the late Larry Jones purchased an existing distributorship in Albany. The company has since grown to 10 locations, and it is poised for further expansion.
The company’s hub is at its Albany store at 1359 Schley Ave., with other locations in Americus, Bainbridge, Cordele, Columbus, Thomasville, Tifton, Valdosta, Warner Robins and Tallahassee, Fla. The company sells welding and industrial supplies, including welding gases. It conducts repairs on welding equipment and gas apparatuses, sells steel, services portable fire extinguishers and is a Lenox bandsaw blade welding center.
Brandon Jones, president of the company and Larry Jones’ son, describes the company as a full-line welding and industrial supplier.
“If you have to weld, we can provide everything from beginning to end,” he said.
The company, known as Jones Welding for short, provides safety supplies and has a steel warehouse. Products are acquired in bulk and can be transported from one location to the other to meet the needs of customers, who are largely manufacturers, contractors and agricultural workers.
For instance, the stores work with each other through cylinder-fill facilities in Albany and Warner Robins. Liquid gases are purchased, compressed into cylinders and taken where they are needed.
“We transport cylinders out to other locations and customers pick them up,” Jones said.
Jones’ father was an accountant by trade, but he decided he wanted to own his own business. The only job he was able to get was a bookkeeper’s job at a welding distributorship in Waycross.
“He could see the financials of the company and recognized it was a lucrative business to be in,” Brandon Jones said of his father.
Eventually, a distributorship in Albany was put up for sale, which the elder Jones purchased in 1984. In 1999, when his son graduated from Liberty University and started working at Jones Welding again, the company had expanded to include four locations.
Larry Jones ran the company until a heart attack and triple bypass forced him to step down and pass the reins on to his son in 2002. Brandon Jones’ mother, Sheila Jones, also got involved in the running of the company.
“Just as he was getting back to work part-time (following the heart attack), we found out he had liver cancer,” the younger Jones said.
Larry Jones succumbed to cancer in 2006, leaving his son and wife to operate the business. To this day, Sheila Jones continues to handle collections duties.
Brandon Jones said that, given regulations in the industry today today, industrial supply is a hard business to get into. Most of the competition for Jones Welding, he said, is consolidating into one or two companies.
“It has given us an advantage, because we offer a level of service others cannot offer,” he said.
Being the president of a company with 10 locations and a distribution area that crosses the Alabama and Florida state lines was not something Jones was expecting when he returned to the family business.
“(That was) by the grace of God and the opportunities He has presented,” he said. “That is ultimately the cause for everything.
“This was not something we expected. We have good relationships, and we take advantage of the opportunities presented to us.”
Jones Welding, its president said, is set apart in that he personally is hands-on with customers. He said there is no bureaucracy, fair prices and employees who bend over backward for customers. Around 25 employees work in the Albany store alone, indicating a large employee base for a company of its size.
That personnel size, he said, comes at a great benefit to the customers.
“We have personnel available to help get (customers what they need),” Jones said.
Five to 10 years down the road, Jones said attention will be paid to more possible growth opportunities. In the next year, more space will be needed for the Albany location’s warehouse.
“(In business), you are either dying or are growing,” he said. “We try to push ourselves and stretch ourselves and continue to grow.”
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