Dropping out of school in the 9th grade doesn’t come highly recommended. But, for J.B. Coxwell, the decision has worked out pretty well.Coxwell was born in southern Alabama in 1939. He grew up on a farm and despite having a beautiful 9th grade teacher, Coxwell couldn’t stop staring out the window at the trucks passing by.
“She said, ‘You have got to buckle down and do your schoolwork,’ I said, no I think I want to quit school and be a truck driver,” explained Coxwell, adding the teacher sympathized some, but stressed the need to at least be able to read the road signs.
That teacher is 89 years old these days and Coxwell recently called her with a message.
“I told her, ‘Do you remember making that statement?’ She said yes. I told her, ‘I never learned to read those road signs, so I built them,’” he said.
Today, Coxwell is the chairman of the board of J.B. Coxwell Contracting Inc. and his company is in the process of building much of Northeast Florida. What started as a one-man company with $5,000 in 1983 has grown into a 500-person, $150 million company with a sprawling 30-acre campus on the Westside.
Coxwell’s company doesn’t build Jacksonville’s buildings or neighborhoods. He installs the infrastructure that makes those buildings and neighborhoods possible. You’ve driven his roads on the way to work. You’ve parked on his lots at Target, Home Depot and other retail outlets. Your kids play at his parks and you have electricity and running water in your home thanks to his company’s underground utilities.
“We are a complete site construction manager,” said Coxwell. “We do heavy clearing, road building, some bridge work and we are getting into disaster recovery work. We are in the business of making money. If it’s not illegal, fattening or immoral, we’ll do it.”
J.B. Coxwell is the classic entrepreneur who took advantage of every job and he had to learn everything he could. More than anything, he loves to go to work. He did retire once — in 1997 — for four days.
“I couldn’t stand it,” he said.
