Barnhart’s David Webster: Front-line focused

David Webster didn’t grow up in the crane and rigging business. He didn’t even start his career in the industry. But he’s a quick study and a natural leader.

David Webster, President, Barnhart Crane & Rigging

In late March, Webster was named president of Barnhart Crane & Rigging, one of the largest and most respected crane and rigging companies in North America. He is aware of the “proverbial” big shoes he is filling, taking on the role that Alan Barnhart has held for some 39 years. But he doesn’t seem the slightest bit daunted. In fact, he is excited about the opportunity to help take the Memphis, Tennessee-based company to new levels of success.

Barnhart introduction

Webster began his career in a family-owned industrial construction business. He worked his way through the ranks, eventually running that business. In 2007, the business was sold, giving Webster time to reflect on what he wanted to do next.

He went to work for a private equity group, and during that time he had a friend who had gone to work for Barnhart. A connection was made.

“Jeff Latture was the first person I met at Barnhart,” Webster recalled. “He and I talked about a subject matter expert position in a focus market.”

But the job wasn’t right for Webster at the time. Interestingly, Barnhart came calling again a few years later.

In 2014, an opportunity arose and Webster took the job with Barnhart, moving his family from Maryland to Idaho. Barnhart had recently purchased Hite Crane in Spokane, Washington, and they needed someone to step in and bring the Barnhart culture and management philosophies into the business.

“They felt like I was aligned to do that,” he said. “My first post was manager of what would become Barnhart’s Spokane branch.”

Webster’s background in industrial construction was a good fit, and it

didn’t take long for him to learn the ins and outs of the taxi crane business.

“Barnhart does a really good job of boot camping people into the business from outside,” he recalls. “It was truly a baptism by fire. And it was lots of fun. We had some really good guys in the branch who were really good at what they did. They taught me about the business, and I taught them about business in general. It was a good marriage.”

In 2016, Barnhart started expanding in the Pacific Northwest, purchasing Sicklesteel Cranes. Webster was named regional manager of Barnhart’s Pacific Northwest operations, which expanded from two branches to five, and into the state of Oregon. The business started making deep relationships in the region, and they began offering specialty rigging services. Webster’s star started rising in the Barnhart world.

In 2018, he was offered the position of senior vice president of operations, which largely included the western United States, from west of the Mississippi to the Pacific. In time, he would take on more branches in more geographies.

“I started getting experience with some of the legacy Barnhart branches, and I also started learning the retail side of our business,” he said.

Moving to Memphis

By 2021, he was offered the role of chief operating officer at Barnhart’s headquarters location in Memphis. That’s when it became apparent he was being groomed for an even larger position.

A couple of weeks before Barnhart released the news of Webster’s appointment as president, I had the opportunity to set up an interview with him. We met at the SC&RA Annual Conference in Phoenix, where we sat down and talked about all things Barnhart and his new role.

I found Webster to be genuine, thoughtful and affable. He is also keenly intelligent and knows the Barnhart business through and through. I feel like his transition to the new role has been seamless and that the company is in good hands with Webster at the helm and Alan Barnhart remaining an active adviser.

What are lessons you’ve learned from working alongside Alan Barnhart?

I have learned so much. So many lessons. Alan has a unique gift to see all the possibilities at once.

I think (author and commentator) Jordan Peterson would express this in terms of “openness.” The way I would explain openness is that a good CEO has the ability to see past natural barriers, to see the possibilities that extend beyond natural barriers.

Alan absolutely has that ability. Where some, typically those in operations, see the difficulty to getting to that lofty height. But Alan can see that lofty height. It’s inspiring and it’s challenging.

Have you developed this ability?

I have developed it, to some degree. You have to keep up through the years.

How has your leadership influenced the Barnhart culture?

Barnhart very much influenced me, and I very much feel like I have influenced Barnhart, both for the good.

I watched the way my predecessor did the job [in the COO role], and I didn’t think it was something that I could do. But he told me, “You won’t do it like me. You should do it like you.”

I was given the freedom to do it my way, and I think I have. And that’s a good thing.

What do you see as the biggest challenges for Barnhart in the short term? In the long term?

I think in the short term, and this is very near and present and the topic of conversations, I think tariffs have thrown us all into a bit of a tailspin. We are seeing a slow down for the first time since post- Covid. For us, in 2021 there was a post-pandemic hangover.

Barnhart President David Webster said that the company performs some 40,000 jobs a year, and only about 500 of them are the big, “sexy” SC&RA Job of the Year-type projects.

But since then, ‘22, ‘23, ‘24, they’ve all been about growth. We’ve seen 20 to 25 percent growth a year, year-over-year. Every month is better than the previous year’s month. Every January is better than the previous January.

But now, we see that slowing down. While we may need a bit of a respite, managing that is a challenge. I do think it’s a pause, but this pause will need to be managed.

Long term, the biggest constraint in business is our people resources. I think in the skilled trades, it’s very difficult to recruit and retain talent.

Through the years, Barnhart has grown through organic growth and through acquisitions. Do you expect to continue similar growth strategies?

We do have a strategy. We have been working a strategic plan that we put together three years ago, to add 15 new locations in three years, and we did that. We actually exceeded that.

As a result, we did sit down and reestablish a new strategic plan. Alan and I have talked about opportunities in the future, and we said to each other that while we’ll be more discerning, we will also be ready for the opportunities that fit us. We approach each acquisition opportunity through the lens of our past performance in this realm. Our process works. As long as the business is not toxic, and it doesn’t run counter to our culture, we can take that business and instill our culture, our processes and procedures, our thinking and our tools. We can win in the market.

Do you envision fleet changes/refresh in the coming year?

Yes. When people talk about their fleets, they often think about it in terms of fleet age, which is an element. We look at things in terms of fleet health, not simply fleet age. Health as we would define it is a function of machine condition (a function of a robust preventive maintenance system), fleet age and cosmetic condition, because we believe that perception does matter. Reputation is largely visual. When you show up on a jobsite, how you look matters. Fleet refreshing is absolutely part of it. We are in that process now.

What distinguishes Barnhart in the markets it serves?

I think a number of things. I think for the business guy, it’s the decentralized nature of our business. We look at the branches as the primary business unit. Everything that happens in the branches doesn’t necessarily flow through the center. It allows us to be quick on our feet, and to be very nimble. It allows us to make decisions that are local and not national. It allows us to serve our customers better and to serve our people better because those things are being done as close to the ground as possible. A “front line focus” is the way I like to describe it.

The other thing is our culture of innovation. Our slogan, which you may see on our vehicles, our shirts and stickers, is “Minds over matter.” It really is the way that we think. We don’t see a problem and ask what crane tonnage can we throw at it? We ask the question, “What is the most elegant economic solution that we can put out there to solve this problem?”

And sometimes that means building that solution. Our willingness to do that, and the infrastructure we’ve built to be able to do that, it sets us apart.

Like the Barnhart Tipstick?

That’s a great example. The tipstick is a neat tool that came out of a single problem, and now it’s thrown at a thousand problems a year. We have lots of tools like that.

Are there any specific industry sectors where you see growth opportunities?

We do see basic industrial infrastructure, power-gen in particular. We are under powered in lots of sectors. Like data centers with AI. They will need 10 times the power consumption of a standard data center.

We think power in general, and nuclear power, in particular, are going to be really big over the next five to seven years. And our pipeline is reflective of that. We have the largest pipeline in our history, and power is a big part of that.

We see these huge, impressive jobs that the company performs, but do you also do run-of-the mill work?

We did 40,000 jobs last year, and those jobs are less than 500. They are big, sexy and they make for great pictures. And they are very profitable. We want those jobs. But the every day jobs are still happening, 1,000 times an hour in our business.

Barnhart takes on impossible jobs. How does your engineering department play into the company’s ability to achieve what looks to be impossible? Do you have a strategy for this?

We do have a strategy. One of the unique things about Barnhart is that we give every sales person the access to the best minds in our business. Say you’ve been a sales guy for us for 10 minutes. You go to a job and the customer says, “Hey I have this problem and no idea how to solve it.” You, as a salesman, don’t know how to solve it either. But you have the ability to get engineers on white boards immediately. At Barnhart, we believe we have the best minds in our business. We create a presentation using our tool solutions to solve the problem. I think that really sets us apart.

What is the best business advice you’ve ever been given?

It’s a cliché, but it’s the teach a man to fish principle. “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Early in my career, I was a person who fished a lot but I never taught anyone to fish.

What makes you tick? What do you like to do when you are not working?

I have had a myriad of hobbies over the years. But in my spare time these days, dusty old books are my favorite things. Ancient history books, that sort of thing. I collect them. I bid on these books on eBay. It’s fascinating stuff. One recent book of interest is The Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, by Julius Caesar. He refers to books or historical figures that influenced him. And that provides a never-ending bounce to the next book.