About Lookout Mountain Tarp

A lot of customers are curious why a business located in Cullman Alabama is called Lookout Mountain Tarp.  Well it’s a pretty interesting story.

Lookout Mountain Tarp is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, tarpaulin company in the United States. The business originated in Chattanooga Tennessee in the early 1920’s and was actually incorporated in 1927.  When I meet Pat and Peggy Ellis they had been running the business for the last 42 years.   We meet the Ellis’ on a cruise in the Mediterranean in 2000.   We were seated with the Ellis’ at lunch after touring Ephesus in Turkey. It turned out Pat had attended private school some 50 years before in the town where Beth and I lived, Cullman, Al. More amazing Pat had a brother that was a doctor in my hometown of Clarksdale, Ms and I attended school with his daughter. It is strange how you can be half way around the world and connect with someone you have never laid eyes on before.

Pat made the comment that they were planning on retiring soon and since none of their children were interested in taking over the business their plan was to just lock the doors.  As a businessman of over 30 years that just didn’t make sense to me so soon after our cruise we made a trip to Chattanooga to talk to Pat and Peggy.  I already owned a business in Cullman Alabama and I thought we may have plenty of warehouse space available to run both businesses out of the same location.  Everything seems destined to be and just fell right into place.

After two months of hands on training in Chattanooga I moved the business to its current location in Cullman Alabama.  We hired Steve Suggs (a production manager with well over 15 years experience in the tarpaulin industry) and a few of his best employees combined with a few of ours to make up the new crew.

The business has grown steadily since we took over.  We now operate out of about 4 times the space we started with in 2001, currently employ almost double the number of workers, and created a large scale tarp repair service that didn’t exist before.

Pat’s business philosophy in Chattanooga was always to use the best materials available and provide the highest quality workmanship possible.  We adopted that philosophy from day one and will not change.    All of our tarps are hand built in America by Americans.  We refuse to sell a tarp built out of inferior materials or to cut corners to save time.  We want a long lasting healthy relationship with our customers and it is our opinion that cannot be achieve by selling the same cheap, poorly constructed, imported tarps that most of our competitors have switched to.  If what you want is the cheapest tarp you can put your hands on we are probably not going to be your best choice.  But if a high quality tarp that is built to last, will save you  money in the long run, and is backed by almost 100 years of experience, then look no further. Thanks for taking the time to look at our website and please call if we can help.

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