Brooks Welding doesn't trouble with the small stuff. Big is the name of the game for this family-owned business.

EBrooks Welding Inc. (Valdosta, GA) is one of the largest open job shops in the southeastern United States, Mike Busby, plant manager for the company, said.

“Our name kind of hurts us. Because it's got a family-owned feel, people think we're a small company,” Busby said. However, you'll have to go far to find a shop that has larger equipment and open-shop capacity.

Brooks Welding was founded by Bobby Brooks, who learned his trade as a welder in the Air Force, in the mid-60s. While he worked on at an Air Force base as a welder, he also worked on side jobs as a pickup truck welder. That outside work led to the business that Brooks Welding is today.

The company provides steel fabrication and erection, an automated beam and angle line, gas tungsten arc welding, gas metal arc welding, and sub-arc welding all done by a team of certified welders, a full service machine shop and crane service with 90-ton capacity. The shop's crane has a 230-ft. boom.

Its fabrication shop is 44,000 sq. ft. and has nine overhead cranes, and its beam fabrication shop is 50,000 sq. ft. with six overhead, fully automated crane lines. Brooks also operates a 12,000 sq. ft. machine shop that is equipped with three overhead cranes.

Overall, the shop has 60 employees.

Busby said Brooks Welding is a “red iron” or structural steel shop that gets involved in many different types of projects.

“We buy the I-beams and build buildings, schools, and recently a 600-ton judicial building here in Valdosta,” Busby said.

“We roll plate to 1.5 in. by 20-ft., and have a 750-ton press brake. Our equipment also includes two cutting tables, one with a 12 ft. by 44 ft. table, and another, a Koike Aronson table, that has a 12 ft. by 68 ft. capacity with a beveling head in an open job shop. It's the only beveling cutting table in the southeast U.S. and one of the few you find in an open shop rather than a closed one. We've cut plate that costs $250,000 a sheet,” Busby said.

As examples of the size of its projects, Busby said Brooks recently built two material dryers for a board manufacturing plant. The dryers are 16 ft. in diameter by 84 ft. in length, and they each weigh 260,000 lbs. Another project was a smokestack for a furnace that was 14-ft. in diameter and 60 ft. tall, and it was made of stainless steel. Brooks Welding also has done work for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for their particle studies.

Busby said the shop did the material dryers project “turnkey.”

“We bought the material and did the whole thing,” he said.

He added that the shop does a lot of unusually projects, and rarely does the same type of job twice. In fact, the company's motto is: “Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.” It adopted that motto to indicate the broad range of projects it does.