Industry Mourns Passing of Carolina Chapter Founder Calvin Hall

Calvin Hall, consummate truss and business entrepreneur, passed away after a long illness on November 17, 2022.  Calvin founded Carolina Truss and Manufacturing in 1977 and made a long and lasting impact on the careers of countless truss industry associates, and on the industry at large.  He relied on the resources of WTCA/SBCA and its members to guide his young business, and met his future partner, Gifford Shaw, at a WTCA seminar in Atlanta in 1980.  In 1990 he brought together his competitors to form a Carolina Chapter of SBCA and served as its first President, never hesitating to share his expertise with the group.  And in 1993 he founded Florence Truss Manufacturing with Gifford Shaw, then owner of Shaw Components in Sumter, SC. 

Calvin’s life’s journey began in the mill town of Danville, Virginia, and his early ambition was to avoid the doldrums that his father experienced laboring in the Dan River textile mill.  After he attended Virginia Tech for a time, he took a job with Solite, a lightweight aggregate company which put him in contact with Southeastern Materials in Albemarle, North Carolina, that ultimately hired him in their block plant.  Shortly thereafter, Southeastern opened a truss plant and put Calvin in charge.  After five years learning the business, he was ready to start his own operation, but first had to attract outside partners to help finance it.  With bare-bones financing in place, he located his plant in the growing western suburbs of Charlotte, NC.  Though he began with a small facility and very basic equipment, he ran his operation with the greatest attention to detail, successfully competing against the large multi-plant truss plants surrounding him.

Over his tenure, Calvin earned the respect of his peers, and, in the late 1990s, his was the first truss facility in the East to be purchased by Carolina Builders, which would shortly become Stock Building Supply.  Calvin lent his expertise to Stock for a time, and then joined the Moser Group for several years, developing commercial real estate projects.  In 2008, he completed his long career rejoining Gifford Shaw in H2H Commercial, a provider of turnkey services for multi-family projects, until their sale of the company in 2018.

Calvin was an unsung hero, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes, growing the state of the art, the people, and the professionalism of the industry.  And he never sought recognition.  All whom he touched in the component industry mourns his loss.