Mr. B’s Buildings and Supplies opened in 1977, when Carl and Clarise Berryhill began selling mobile homes four miles outside Clarksdale, Mississippi. Decades later the company still answers the original 1977 phone number, and the family still runs it. The way the business survived an industry collapse, the loss of its founders, and the pressure to sell offers a working example of what keeps family-run home builders competitive: shared trust, deep flexibility, and a willingness to change the product before the market forces the change.
This article pulls the lessons from that story and applies them to any family construction firm: diversifying revenue, surviving a downturn, keeping the family working together, and passing the company to the next generation on purpose instead of by accident.
Diversify Before the Downturn
The Berryhills never depended on a single check. The storefront sold mobile homes, mobile home parts, and vehicles. At one point it became a country store with sandwiches, a pool table, a jukebox, and video games. The grandfather ran a mobile home toter on the side, moving and setting up the homes he sold, which meant delivery income on top of sales income. When the rural home office outgrew its market, the family opened a second lot in a high-traffic part of Clarksdale for one child to manage, then a third in Cleveland, Mississippi, for another.
Four Ways the Business Spread Its Risk
- Product lines: homes, parts, and vehicles instead of homes alone
- Vertical integration: the toter business earned delivery and setup fees on every sale
- Sidelines: the country store converted idle storefront space into steady foot traffic
- Locations: three lots in different markets, each run by a family member
Each addition carried its own cost, and that is the point. The same discipline shows up in design: a small family home works only when every square foot earns its keep, and a small family business works the same way. Every product line, location, and revenue stream has to carry its own weight, or it becomes the next leak.
| Revenue stream | Capital needed | Risk level | Example for a building firm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core product sales | High | Market dependent | Mobile homes, portable buildings |
| Parts and accessories | Low | Low | Replacement parts, trim, hardware |
| Service and delivery | Low | Low | Setup, hauling, site preparation |
| Retail sidelines | Medium | Low | Storefront sales from the office |
None of these streams made the family rich on its own. Together they smoothed the months when sales were slow, which is exactly what a revenue mix is for.
Surviving a Market Collapse
After the third lot opened, the mobile home industry went through a long and severe crash from 1999 to 2001, the same pattern the housing market repeated in 2008. Loans were overextended, lenders that specialized in manufactured housing went bankrupt, and financing became nearly impossible. Industry-wide inventory shipments dropped by roughly 90 percent by 2001, leaving sales lots empty. Manufacturers opened their own sales centers, pushing small dealers out.
The small dealer was no more, at least in the old form. The family shifted to selling repo and used mobile homes only, and they worked out a deal with a local bank to finance the homes. The grandfather’s equipment could retrieve a home in the event of repossession, which gave the bank a reason to say yes. The bank accepted the arrangement because the collateral was real and recoverable: a used home could be towed, resold, and the loan repaid, which is more than a lender can say for most small-business loans. That is the whole lesson of the episode: when the market collapses, the businesses that survive are the ones that can answer yes when a lender asks how they get their money back.
Why the Crash Hit Small Dealers Hardest
- Financing dependence: when lenders failed, buyers could not qualify and lots went empty
- Manufacturer competition: factories opened their own sales centers and took the volume
- Thin margins: a small dealer’s cushion could not absorb 90 percent shipment declines
- No capital buffer: recovery required cash the business had already spent
A legacy can outlast a market collapse when the people behind it decide what comes next. The Aldo Leopold Legacy Center in Baraboo, Wisconsin, was built to carry a conservationist’s work forward, and its builders treated the project as a statement of what the organization would stand for. A family business can do the same. The Mr. B’s family answered the collapse with used homes and bank financing, and the business kept its name, its property, and its phone number. The founder also kept working: diagnosed with lung cancer, the grandfather worked every day until he passed away in 2005.
Keeping the Family Hub Working
The business did not stop when the founder died. An uncle, Mike Brasher, kept it afloat through mobile home parts sales. The grandmother held the operation together. At one time or another, every member of the family worked for the company, and the original 1977 phone number stayed in service. The property, five acres with the home office where the owner caught the school bus in front of the office, remained the center of the operation. Running the company after a founder’s death is a test most family firms face eventually. The parts counter kept cash coming in without depending on the founder’s personal sales relationships, and that independence is what carried the business until the next generation could take over.
Family businesses run on shared space, the way a home runs on its kitchen. A curved booth turned an awkward kitchen into a family hub because it gave people a place to sit together. The Mr. B’s storefront did the same with its pool table and jukebox. A business that gives the family a reason to gather survives the founder’s absence long enough to be handed over.
What a Family Hub Does for a Business
- Communication: problems surface at the counter instead of in the annual review
- Training: younger family members learn by watching daily decisions
- Loyalty: employees who feel like family stay through the hard months
- Continuity: when one owner is out, someone else already knows the business
Passing the Business to the Next Generation
The succession crisis arrived anyway. The uncle experienced a heart attack in 2007 and retired. The grandmother could not run the business alone, and the owner made the difficult decision to list it for sale. There were offers, and the listing drew interest. The episode shows how quickly an unplanned transfer can force a family decision that should have been made years earlier.
Families remodel a kitchen when the household changes, and the same logic applies to the business. Kitchen remodeling for a growing family starts with who uses the space and how; succession planning starts with who will run the company and how they will be trained. Both fail when the change is postponed until it is forced.
Five Documents Every Family Firm Needs
- A buy-sell agreement that prices the business now, not in the middle of a crisis
- Life insurance and ownership transfer terms that fund the buyout
- Key-person coverage for the owner whose absence would stop the work
- An updated will and estate plan that matches the business reality
- A written training schedule for the successor, with a completion date
A practical starting point is a yearly family meeting with four agenda items: review last year’s numbers together, state each family member’s interest in the business, agree on the successor and the timeline, and write down the decisions so they can be revisited next year.
| Succession task | Timing | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| Document processes and customer records | Year one | Owner |
| Name a successor and set the transfer price | Year one | Owner and family |
| Train the successor on every job | Years one to three | Successor |
| Fund the transfer with insurance and financing | Year three | Owner and accountant |
| Test the handover with a staged absence | Year four | Successor |
What Outlasts the Founder
Companies that survive a generation change do not stay the same; they shift products and services as the market shifts. Mr. B’s moved from mobile homes to the portable structures it offers today. Growth plans need the same deliberate approach. Contractors who move from single-family to multifamily construction do not simply build bigger; they change financing, codes, and management, and the successful ones plan the transition first. The Mr. B’s family made the equivalent change, moving the product line instead of letting the market move without them.
The original phone number and the five-acre property are small things on a balance sheet, but they anchor the business in the family’s identity, and customers notice when they stay the same across decades. The kitchen works as the heart of a family home because it is the one room everyone uses, and an open layout keeps the family connected. The same is true of the family business. The shared values, the original phone number, and the willingness to work together are the open layout that keeps the next generation connected. The Berryhills kept the business going by being flexible and resilient, shifting from mobile homes to the portable structures it offers today. Resilience is a system, not a sentiment: diversify revenue, finance conservatively, document everything, and train the next generation while the current one is still there.