In May 2011, Jule Smith offered a road builder’s assessment of the years before the economic downturn: “I don’t think we knew how good we had it.” He was running Fred Smith Company in Raleigh. The subject was cuts at North Carolina’s transportation department. There was no mistaking the direction of travel.
That same year, Construction Partners acquired his family’s business. A transaction that could have closed one chapter instead opened a much longer one. Smith stayed with the operation. Ten years later, he was chosen to run its parent company. Today, the former owner whose business joined the group is the executive welcoming other owners into it.
It gives his acquisition announcements an unusual backstory. When he talks about a family of companies, his own family’s name is already on the list. He has experienced the change in ownership that he now asks other contractors to consider. The pitch comes with a work history.
A family name, then a larger address book
Fred Julius “Jule” Smith III grew up in Johnston County, North Carolina, and graduated from Clayton High School. At Wake Forest University, he studied history and later earned an MBA. History is a pleasingly unhurried preparation for a business in which much depends on getting material to the right place at the right time.
He began his construction career at Fred Smith Company in 1992. The dates matter here: this was a long apprenticeship in the industry before the public-company job arrived. He became president in 2009 and remained in that position until 2020, spanning both the 2011 acquisition and the years that followed it.
There was another strand of service running alongside the construction career. In 2004, Smith received a direct commission as a Supply Corps officer in the United States Navy Reserve. He served until 2012. The civilian and military entries overlap on his résumé, two responsibilities occupying the same stretch of years.
Smith still lives in Raleigh with his wife, Alisa. They have four children; golf, fly-fishing and family travel appear among their interests. His corporate responsibilities reach across the Sunbelt, but his home base remains in the state where his career began.
The buyer’s future chief executive
By 2017, Smith was a senior vice president of Construction Partners. In October 2020, he moved into its newly created chief operating officer position. His remit covered organizational development and day-to-day operations. The company was adding a role to help manage an expanding business, and gave it to someone who had spent years running one of its constituent parts.
Charles Owens, then president and CEO, pointed to Smith’s experience as a former owner and his work building the North Carolina operation. Executive chairman Ned Fleming emphasized his operating knowledge. The succession had an intelligible sequence: run the local business, contribute to the wider company, then take responsibility for its daily machinery.
The next promotion arrived quickly. Announced in March 2021 and effective at the close of that month, it made Smith president and chief executive. Owens moved to vice chairman, continuing to work on strategy and acquisitions. Smith thanked him for a decade of mentorship. His predecessor remained part of the company’s working arrangements.
At the handover, Construction Partners had approximately 2,500 employees and operated across five southeastern states. Smith was inheriting an established model, relationships and colleagues. The task was to make that organization larger while keeping its local businesses capable of doing the work that had made them worth buying.
“I am personally grateful to Charles for his mentorship and wisdom over the last decade.”
Jule Smith / on succeeding Charles Owens, 2021
A map made of local businesses
Smith’s home territory supplies a useful example. In June 2024, CPI acquired Hudson Paving in Rockingham, North Carolina. The purchase brought a hot-mix asphalt plant, crews and equipment into Fred Smith Company. Combined with the existing plant in Carthage, Smith said, the addition would allow the business to serve the Pinehurst and Southern Pines area more fully.
That is a compact account of his growth strategy. A plant has a location. A crew has experience. A neighboring operation can extend the area a business serves. On an investor’s map, another dot appears. For the people running the operation, the question is what that dot lets them do on Monday morning.
The vocabulary can sound grand: platforms, integration, geographic expansion. The ingredients are remarkably tangible. Smith’s announcements return to facilities, equipment, services and the people who know how to use them. These are acquisitions with a considerable parking requirement.
Texas arrives. Tennessee stretches.
In November 2024, Construction Partners completed the acquisition of Lone Star Paving, establishing its Texas platform. Lone Star brought an asphalt manufacturing and paving business operating in central Texas. Smith stressed the fit between the organizations, including employee advancement and the connection between materials production and construction.
The acquisition also changed the company’s immediate financial expectations: CPI raised its fiscal 2025 outlook to account for the November closing. Here was the other side of the job. An acquisition must work for the people doing the paving and be accounted for by the people producing the financial statements. Smith answers for both.
In May 2025 came the acquisition of PRI of East Tennessee and Pavement Restorations. Together, they became CPI’s Tennessee platform, bringing nearly 300 employees. The combination extended from Knoxville toward the greater Memphis area. Existing Nashville-area operations were to move under PRI’s management.
PRI also supplied pavement preservation expertise. Extending the life of an existing surface broadens the work available to a road contractor. A business can grow by reaching another city, or by bringing another useful service to the city where it already works. Smith’s acquisition record contains both approaches.
What a billion-dollar quarter still requires
By the quarter ended June 30, 2026, Construction Partners reported revenue of $999.4 million, compared with $779.3 million a year earlier. Net income was $59.6 million, up from $44.0 million. Backlog stood at $3.36 billion. The round-number temptation is considerable; the company finished just short of a billion dollars in quarterly sales.
Revenue, in millions of dollars
Smith discussed those results alongside wet weather and energy cost inflation. Expansion does not remove the practical constraints of construction. Backlog is contracted work still to be performed, with all the scheduling and execution that implies. An earnings announcement may arrive at seven in the morning; the work behind it has taken rather longer.
The business now operates in eight states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Its public work includes roads, runways and bridges; private projects include paving and sitework for developments. That breadth gives Smith a larger organization to coordinate, one whose output is encountered by people who may never learn its parent company’s name.
The next introductions
October 2026 brought two more examples of the strategy in motion. On October 5, CPI acquired the asphalt manufacturing and construction assets of J.H. Strain & Sons in Tye, Texas. Two hot-mix plants and their associated operations joined Lone Star Paving, extending its presence into the Abilene area. More than 125 employees were joining the Texas business.
On October 19, the company announced the acquisition of S.E. Cline Construction in Palm Coast, Florida. Its roughly 60 employees and site development and underground utility capabilities were joining C.W. Roberts Contracting. The deal also included a rail-served, permitted asphalt plant site in Bunnell. That site represented an opportunity for future development, rather than an operating plant already producing material.
The distinction is useful when thinking about Smith’s ambitions. Some growth arrives ready to work. Some arrives as a place where more capacity could eventually be built. He is assembling both, linking current operations with possible next steps.
Raleigh remains on the route
Alongside the corporate role, Smith chairs the NC Chamber’s board. His North Carolina connections also include service with construction trade organizations, North State Bank and St. David’s School. Those commitments keep the profile rooted in a particular community, even as his operating map has acquired Texas and Oklahoma.
At the 2026 Raymond James conference, he described having lived inside CPI’s strategy for a decade before leading it. It is a useful perspective on his career: first the local company, then the larger organization, then responsibility for deciding which businesses should come next.
The 2011 photograph catches him beside a Fred Smith Company truck, talking with an employee over a clipboard. Years later, the scale has changed enough to fill an earnings presentation. The underlying transaction remains recognizable: people, equipment and a job to get done. Smith’s next acquisition will need another introduction. Then someone will need to get the trucks moving.