Expanding in Quincy: Third-generation family business adds location, brings jobs

QUINCY — Josh Paul, the owner of Raceways Technology, is proud of already beating the odds as a third-generation family-owned company.

Now, the Tacoma-based company has expanded to Quincy with the help of the Port of Quincy, bringing 30-35 jobs to the area.

Paul said Raceways, which was founded in 1979 by his grandfather, Steve Paul Sr., has opened a 50,000-square-foot Quincy facility to supply fittings, elbows and sweeps primarily to the region’s data centers and the Grant County Public Utility District, as it wires the county for fiber-optic internet.

Port of Quincy Commissioner Curt Morris said the port was happy to work with Paul, but that it took some time to reach a deal both the port and Paul could work with.

“We got the lead looking to expand the facility into this area,” Morris said. “Did our due diligence, started talking about how we do this.”

Morris said the port started work on the $2.2 million building at 1302 NE Intermodal Way in 2021, but completion was delayed last winter as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul agreed to a long-term lease with an option to buy, an arrangement Morris said has worked out well so far.

“Absolutely, it’s worked out good,” he said. “He’s expanding just like he thought he would, and we look forward to future expansion.”

When Paul’s father, Steve Paul Jr., died in 2014, and Paul inherited the company, he said he discovered few family-owned companies are successfully passed on to the third generation.

“I learned during probate when my father passed away and I took over the business that only 10% of family businesses make it to the third generation,” Paul said.

“At the time, the CPAs and the bankers were trying to make me feel good, and they said, ‘Hey, if you don’t make it through this, don’t feel bad,’” Paul said. “But luckily, I grew up in the industry, grew up in this business.”

“I was able to maintain and we’re still here,” he added.

Raceways opened its facility in Quincy earlier this year and celebrated with a formal ribbon-cutting on Aug. 19, also hosting the Quincy Valley Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Business After Hours get-together.

This business he’s in is, Paul admits, a very niche one — making custom PVC fittings and bending PVC and fiberglass pipes into elbows and sweeps (very long elbows) as conduits mainly for underground electrical cables, though Paul said the company’s products can house just about any kind of cable or pipe.

“Anything for pipes,” he said. “It’s used all over the place.”

The Quincy facility employs roughly 30-35 people who heat pipes in long flat ovens, and then carefully bend and cool them so they hold the shape. The process is the same whether PVC plastic or fiberglass is involved, Paul said, though fiberglass requires a great deal more heat and must be bent by machine and not by hand.

The company even designs and builds most of its manufacturing equipment in Tacoma — something Paul said his grandfather did when he started the company 40 years ago.

“Excluding the saws, all of it, even the racks that are holding the pipes, the racks, the ovens, the molds, all of it we do by ourselves,” he said. “We’ll buy all of the steel and all of the components needed and just do all of the custom fabrication.”

Paul said things have been busy since officially cutting the ribbon on its new facility on Aug. 19, and with two drivers out, he’s been busy doing deliveries himself as far away as Ponderay, Idaho, and Pendleton, Oregon.

Which is why Paul said he is located in Quincy — it’s centrally located in eastern Washington.

“For Quincy, it was just the central location. And for the utility resources of Grant County and being neighbors with all these data centers,” he said.