Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 2, 1993                   TAG: 9309020361
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DOWN THE ROAD, COMPANY JUST NEEDED ROOM TO GROW

"You can see why we want to move," he said. "Everywhere you look, we're just bursting at the seams."

He wants Lawrence Transportation Systems to grow. So the moving, storage and hauling company is moving its headquarters from Plantation Road in Roanoke to U.S. 11 in Botetourt County.

The move, which the company hopes to make by the middle of next year, also is part of a changing of the guard at the six-decade-old business. Last fall, Weldon S. "Chip" Lawrence, 38, took over as president from his father, Weldon T. Lawrence Jr., 68.

About 80 percent of the company's revenues come from the household moving business. But its freight-hauling division has grown rapidly since the younger Lawrence came on board - and that's where he expects the company's fastest growth.

Chip Lawrence said the move to new quarters has nothing to do with wanting to escape Roanoke for Botetourt's lower tax rate. In fact, with construction of a newer, larger facility, he expects the company's property taxes to rise.

Instead, the Botetourt site will give the company two things it needs to keep growing: ample room to spread out as it diversifies - and quicker, more efficient access to Interstate 81.

The 16.9-acre site in Botetourt is three times the size of its current spot, in a residential area along congested and narrow Plantation Road. "We've got no place to go," Lawrence said as he walked around the busy parking lot. "We're locked in on all sides here."

The business started under Chip Lawrence's grandfather, Weldon T. Lawrence Sr. He left a job on the scrap wharf at the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1932 to haul produce from a stall on the City Market.

When Weldon Jr. took over in 1950, the company had three trucks. Things took off in the mid-1950s when General Electric Co. opened its Salem plant - and Lawrence moved 305 of 340 GE families transferred from New York to the Roanoke Valley.

Now, a tiny portion of Lawrence's business involves moving households in or out of the Roanoke Valley. The company is more likely to move a family from Chicago to Dallas.

Lawrence said he believes the prospects for expansion in household moving are limited. The wholesale corporate restructuring of the 1980s has slowed, and the Pentagon is downsizing, together meaning far fewer transient households for movers to serve in the coming years, Lawrence said.

Conversely, since he took over the business last year, the company's freight-hauling business has grown from 31,000 to 200,000 miles a month.

As the transition in leadership progresses, father and son are careful with each other's feelings.

The son talked as if he and his dad run things on a 50-50 basis. "I want to work it together as long as we can," he said.

The father said he comes in and helps out his son from time to time, but "he can't run a company with me looking over his shoulder."

As for the new directions his son is taking the company, the elder Lawrence said, "I think things have progressed real well. No business stands still - you either go forward or backward."

\ LAWRENCE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS\ \ Headquarters: 2727 Plantation Road N.E., Roanoke. (Next year to move to U.S. 11 near Troutville in Botetourt County.)\ \ Branches: Waynesboro; Raleigh, N.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Charleston, S.C.\ \ Projected 1993 revenues: $20 million to $22 million.\ \ Primary business: Household moving and storage for corporate employees.\ \ Affiliation: Agent and stockholder of United Van Lines.\ \ Growing division: "Special commodities" freight hauling, including new furniture, restaurant and laboratory equipment, convention displays.\ \ Other divisions: Records storage for businesses and professions; truck repair and refurbishing.\ \ Employees, averaged for seasonality: 325; 120 in the Roanoke Valley.\ \ Drivers: 120, including 75 independent contractors; 90 based in Roanoke Valley, including 60 independent contractors.\ \ Number of miles driven per year: 6 million.\ \ Source: The company