R. R. Branstrom At L&C Enterprises, Tie Machine Tech Connor Pascoe boxes fence ties that have been cut and formed out of a large spool of wire.

EDITOR NOTE: The Daily Press will be featuring a series of articles on local businesses, highlighting their history and what makes them unique. The series will run on a regular basis in the Daily Press.

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ESCANABA — A local business whose products and services satisfy customers far and near is entering a new era: ownership is transitioning from one of the original founders to a man who started with the company 12 years ago as a laborer.

Many locals know them for Delta Fence, which makes up only about 10% of the business. The work of its parent company, L&C Enterprises, is the iceberg beneath the surface with an impressive story.

L&C Enterprises, which manufactures products that ship around the continent and also operates Delta Fence, began when two workers in the 1980s wanted to make their jobs easier.

Jeffery Lancour and Ron Chouinard worked for a road construction company and were tasked with installing a mile of six-foot-high chain link fence. At the time, Chouinard explained, fence installations were done by unrolling 50-foot rolls of chain link fencing on the ground, standing them up with a forklift, temporarily tying the material to posts and then permanently tying it afterwards. It was a lengthy, awkward, tiresome process, especially for large jobs.

Lancour and Chouinard had the idea to patent an efficient machine that could unfurl the rolls of fencing in place along the posts, eliminating the need to lay them out on the ground first, and called it the Installink. To create and sell the invention, the duo created a company — L&C Enterprises-USA, Inc. — for which the Articles of Incorporation were signed on April 29, 1988.

Local welder Bob Walker made the prototype of the machine. Carl Wick, who received his degrees in mechanical engineering from Michigan Technological University and had worked for Harnischfeger Corporation’s Construction Equipment Division, re-engineered the Installink’s design, and Express Welding produced the first ten machines.

For startup money, Chouinard said his parents mortgaged their house and lent him $30,000. Chouinard and Lancour were also fortunate that the other original parties involved didn’t ask for payment up front: the engineer just wanted royalties, and the manufacturer made ten machines at a time and didn’t invoice L&C until they were being sold.

“It was pretty neat how everybody just was on board with us to get this company started,” Chouinard said.

L&C attracted interest in their product by bringing the Installink on a trailer to job sites and demonstrating its efficiency. However, in ’89, a big shift moved to skid steers from tractors (for which the Installink had originally been designed), so the first ten machines went back to be re-engineered to fit skid steers instead.

From that point on, the Installink was a hit. Workers saw how much easier use of the machine made their tasks, and companies recognized the impact it had — saving time, manpower and money.

Chouinard proudly described one instance in which L&C brought the Installink on a trailer to a site where a company was installing fencing 15 feet tall around a prison. After L&C rapidly used their machine to rig up a 500-foot-long section as a demonstration, Chouinard said, the owner came out and handed them a paycheck for the work.

“He had six men out there getting 100 feet up a day. We went out there and did 500 feet in three hours,” Chouinard said.

Growth developed “organically” for L&C from its early days until today, said Marketing Director Aaron Dieter. L&C continued to gain traction at trade shows. The fence installation arm of the company, which does business under the name Delta Fence, began roughly a year after L&C did.

Another product group from L&C that aided in making fence setup easier was the ties — pieces of wire in the right shape and size for securing lengths of fencing, called fabric, to the posts.

L&C gets enormous spools of wire that feed into machines that cut and bend pieces into fence ties, which operators then pack into boxes of either 500 or 1000.

Today, L&C makes several varieties of ties for different types and sizes of posts and mesh, and they come in galvanized, aluminized, and vinyl-coated — which is available in multiple colors.

Vinyl-coated chain link fence has become a popular choice in recent years for residences where people want the benefits of the fence without the cold look of a metallic finish.

In the business of improving the job experience for fence installers, L&C now makes a handful of other types of machines that aid in that mission, in addition to the Installink. There is also the Rapid Roller, which rolls up lengths of fabric; a barbed wire dispenser, which applies three rows of barbed wire at a time atop chain link fencing; and post-pullers that remove old poles from the ground from previous installs. All attach to skid steers.

The vast majority of L&C’s business comes from the sale of fence ties. Boxes, pallets, and trucks of them ship to customers in the lower 48 states and to parts of Canada. Some customers are fence installers; others are large companies that redistribute the ties under different brand names to consumers in yet other reaches. Stephens Pipe and Steel, American Fence, and Master Halco are examples of big suppliers that buy from L&C.

In 2024, L&C Enterprises was listed as one of Michigan’s “50 Companies to Watch.”

L&C is enjoying its growing success, and “we’d love to continue that momentum,” Deiter said.

Continuing demand and the fact that so much manufacturing is done in-house means that employees of Delta Fence aren’t laid off in the winter, despite fence-installation work being seasonal. Instead, they pivot to the L&C side, helping to produce parts that will either be shipped out to customers or put to use when spring comes.

“I never like to lay anyone off, because I know what it’s like being laid off and not having a full paycheck,” said Kevin Sodermark, vice president. “So everyone has a multitude of jobs that they do.”

There are 15 full-time employees of L&C and Delta Fence combined. Six of those are office staff.

Sodermark was hired in 2013 as a laborer and said that he learned a lot from Chouinard and Lancour from working under them. Before Lancour retired from presidency of the corporation in 2022 and passed away later that year, he was able to impart a great deal to those who worked with him.

Chouinard has been preparing for retirement, too. Though he’s technically the president currently, he’s stepped back and allowed Sodermark to handle a lot of the business lately.

Sodermark said that the impression Lancour made helped make his transition to a more responsible role pretty smooth. As vice president, “I’ve hired great people that have helped me grow it, too,” Sodermark said, pointing to Deiter as one of those hires.

“The best thing anyone can do is — hire people smarter than you at what they’re doing,” Chouinard quipped. He was referring to a component that had been built in the shop, but the sentiment also applies elsewhere, too.

In L&C’s earliest days of manufacturing, their fence ties were made in a small garage that couldn’t even fit all the equipment inside; Chouinard recalled the spools of wire outdoors under a tarp. As the business expanded, facilities also improved; this happened a few times over.

Now located at 6652 N. 75 Dr., L&C and Delta Fence have room to spread their wings.

A recently-built addition to the premises gives L&C room to hold more stock, and a garage space is going to house a new welding shop.

One change to Delta Fence in more recent years is that they try to take more local jobs. Business primarily used to be larger commercial jobs, but it’s pivoted to being about half residential now, which allows workers to stay local more often.

Significant past work that’s been close to home has been for Enbridge, DTE, City of Escanaba, City of Gladstone, and Delta County Airport. Upcoming projects include the perimeter fence of the solar panel project in the St. Nicholas area and the tennis courts at the Rapid River and Big Bay de Noc Schools.

Sodermark will take over the role of president and sole owner when Chouinard officially retires in June. It’ll be the start of a new era — until now, the joint companies of L&C and Delta Fence have always been shared by the hands of two individuals — first Lancour and Chouinard, then Chouinard and Sodermark.

An open house is planned for the spring. Management is looking forward to welcoming the public to an after hours event on May 21 from 5 to 7 p.m. The occasion will serve as a celebration of Chouinard’s career, bring together other organizations L&C works closely with, and offer a facility tour to the public.