For Sheehan Pipe Line Construction Co., which celebrates its 110th anniversary this year, the secret to longevity could well lie within its founding family. Take current chairman David Sheehan, for instance. At 66, the Tulsa-based Sheehan has no plans to retire to some exotic, far-away place to punch out of the company clock for eternity. Indeed, until recently, when the spry senior wasn’t helping run his hugely successful company, he was biding his spare time Porsche Cup Racing. (Sheehan is now recovering from back surgery after crashing his 911 Turbo into a tire wall at about 80 miles an hour.)

“I think—in fact, I know—my career as a driver is over,” says Sheehan, who tells Midstream Business with a laugh: “Actually, the car came out of the deal better than I did.”

And so it’s plain that the Sheehan clan isn’t the kind to slow down on work or play. This has been the case since at least 1903, when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the first transatlantic radio broadcast aired between the U.S. and England. It was also the year an ambitious 49-year-old named John (“Jack”) Sheehan founded Sheehan Pipe Line Construction Co. Having spent decades building pipelines in northern Pennsylvania and southern New York in the 1880s and 1890s, Jack Sheehan ultimately followed the oil patch to Oklahoma, where his pipeline construction company was born. Back in those early days, men dressed in sports coats and vests were digging pipe trenches with shovels. Since American workers weren’t interested in working the fields for a pittance, Irish immigrants were hired to do the dirty work.

Jack Sheehan led the company until his death in 1921.

One of his five sons, Ray Sheehan, took over the company. He ran things until 1939, when he died in a “tragic accident.” This put another of Jack Sheehan’s son, John B., at the helm of company operations. John B. ran things until about 1945, when his son Bob Sheehan (David Sheehan’s father) returned from serving in the Second World War. Just two days after returning from battle, Bob Sheehan was sent to work for the family company.

The next generation

It’s believed that Sheehan Pipe Line is today the country’s oldest surviving pipeline construction company. David Sheehan is the fourth generation to run the company. Increasingly, Robert A. Riess has taken on the bulk of responsibilities. Riess joined Sheehan Pipe Line in 2004 as president and in 2011 assumed the role of president and chief executive after also becoming an owner in the company. He began his career at Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. and holds a civil engineering degree from the University of Missouri.

Meantime, Sheehan continues to oversee things as chairman of the board. Riess and Sheehan are the only ones to hold company shares.

Under Sheehan’s leadership, the company has become among the country’s largest pipeline contractors. It has an investment of more than $45 million in equipment. The company’s fleet of some 250 trucks and as many major pieces of other equipment “now handle the jobs horses and oxen once performed,” as its website puts it. The company has about $230 million in projects this year alone.

But ask Sheehan about retirement, and he’ll reply with a laugh.

“Oh, I doubt it,” he says. “I’ll stay involved in some way. I don’t stay idle.”

He joined the ranks back in 1964, but didn’t exactly start at the top. Just as his father before him, Sheehan worked his way up from the bottom. He’s worked as a foreman, a laborer and a truck driver.

“My dad didn’t cut any favors,” says Sheehan. “I had to earn my way. If I was going to go after it, I was going to have to work for it.”

He still remembers his first day on the job, when he was sent out by then-company superintendent Warren Mulkey to lay 4-inch pipeline in a small Wisconsin town. Sheehan was quickly put to work, unloading the pipe by hand and holding the pieces up as the welder prepared to bevel. He continued to hold the pipes as they were welded. By day’s end, he was too exhausted to lift his arms, he recalls with a laugh.

Throughout the years, Sheehan and Mulkey would share jokes about that inaugural day in the field.

“He would say, ‘You gave me ulcers,’” Sheehan recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, you gave me my bad back.’”

After graduating with a civil engineering degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1970, Sheehan returned to the company, where he took on new responsibilities as office manager and parts manager. Working various roles throughout the company gave Sheehan invaluable perspective into the company into the whole.

“If you’re going to manage this business, you have to understand the workers out in the field. You have to know the work,” says Sheehan. “You can study all the management stuff you want, but really, this is one business where you really have to know how employees they do their job out in the field, how they think and how to motivate them. To me, the one way you learn that is by being part of them, being accepted by them and learning from them.”

Changing times

Without a doubt, Sheehan Pipe Line has seen many changes throughout the years as the industry evolved. Under David Sheehan’s watch alone, the company has gone from digging ditches by hand, to working with a fleet of mostly hydraulic machinery. The company switched from a shielded welding arc process to automatic mechanized welding too. As well, Sheehan witnessed the industry become the driver of the American economy with the emergence of shale technologies.

It is all a far cry from the good old days, when trains would pull carloads of coal to fire machinery engines at work sites. And, while crews who encountered a river crossings once had to dig ditches through their nautical obstacles, they can today simply drill holes beneath the water bodies and pull pipe underneath, without having to disturb the crossings at all.

“You know, the one thing constant about this industry is change,” says Sheehan. “I guess that’s what makes it exciting.”

Moving forward, Sheehan says he believes the vast amount of natural gas in the U.S. will continue benefiting the country. With gas prices so low, he says he expects to see more transportation systems converted to be powered by the fuel.

“I think we’ve got a really exciting future,” he says. “I think ultimately, as least for 20-25 years, natural gas is going to power this country. And I think if we can take advantage of that, I think our economy will pick up and start to grow again.”

Highs and lows

Throughout the past century, Sheehan Pipe Line has seen its share of highs and lows. During the Great Depression, the company was down to two employees. One was a superintendent and the other was the shop foreman. Yet, still, the company managed to survive through the 1930s, 1940s and beyond. The company has worked in 48 states throughout the U.S.

The company hit a growth spurt in the early 1990s. After taking on increasingly large projects, Sheehan was ultimately able to bring Sheehan Pipe Line from middle-sized to a large-sized company. In 2008-09, the company had upward of 2,700 people on the payroll during work season. Growing the company was among Sheehan’s proudest professional moments, he says.

Of course, given the cyclical nature of the business, Sheehan has also personally experienced two or three bottoms with the company. During those tough times, he wondered whether he would be able to keep it all together. He says his company overcame those times of adversity by trusting in its employees and keeping the staff intact.

“That’s the most important thing to do in a downturn,” Sheehan says. “You can sell off your equipment, you can do other things, but what you need to do is just make sure that your key people survive.”

Throughout it all, Sheehan Pipe Line has maintained its commitment to employees, who’ve been the backbone of its success. And so, Sheehan says, the secret to the company’s longevity boils down to just that.

“My dad taught me that no matter what, you should make sure you treat people how they needed to be treated, and how you would like to be treated if you were in that situation,” Sheehan says. “So I think the care and attention that the company has always placed on the people has probably been the most important lesson we’ve learned.”

Michelle Thompson can be reached at 713-260-1065 or mthompson@hartenergy.com.

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