Construction Partners Inc. said on Oct. 5 that it has acquired the asphalt manufacturing and construction operations of J.H. Strain & Sons Inc., a paving contractor based in Tye, Texas, just west of Abilene. The deal brings two hot-mix asphalt plants, the crews and the equipment into Lone Star Paving, the company’s Texas platform. More than 125 employees come with it.
The price didn’t come with it. The release filed with the SEC discloses no purchase price, no revenue figure for the acquired business and no backlog. That’s the same treatment the Dothan, Alabama, company gave its last deal two weeks ago, when it bought a Pensacola asphalt plant and 150 people and said nothing about what it paid.
What the Abilene asphalt plant acquisition actually buys
The release describes the Strain family business in one line. A January 2025 profile published by equipment dealer Kirby-Smith Machinery fills in more. It dates the company to 1959, lists four divisions (earthwork, paving, crushing and concrete), puts headcount at about 125 and says 98% to 99% of the work was government contracts, mostly for the Texas Department of Transportation. Most jobs sat within 75 miles of the hot-mix plant.
Two details don’t line up neatly. That profile counted one hot-mix plant on Interstate 20 and quarries in Eastland and View. Construction Partners counts two plants and doesn’t mention quarries, crushing or concrete at all. Whether the aggregate side of the business conveyed, stayed with the family or was never part of the conversation isn’t disclosed.
It matters. A hot-mix plant with its own rock is a different asset than one buying stone at the gate.
Lone Star Paving gets a West Texas position, and a data center talking point
CEO Fred J. (Jule) Smith III called Abilene a growing market with a diversified economy and pointed to data center development as part of the draw. Fair enough. The campuses going up around Abilene need haul roads, parking and laydown paving, and somebody has to make the mix.
But read the seller’s order book again. As of that 2025 profile, nearly everything it built was let by TxDOT. What Construction Partners bought is a public-works paver with a plant radius and a long bidding history in one highway district. The data center line is for investors; the highway lettings are the business. Asphalt doesn’t travel far before it cools, which is why this industry consolidates one county at a time.
That’s also the Construction Partners model. Buy the local plant, keep the crews and the family name on the trucks, and bid the same state work with a bigger balance sheet behind it. The company operates in eight states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Undisclosed terms are the pattern in paving M&A, not the exception
Construction Partners is Nasdaq-listed, so the number will surface eventually in purchase accounting. Its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, which puts this deal in the first week of the new one. Until the filings catch up, anyone trying to price a regional asphalt producer has little to work with.
Compare that with Cardinal Infrastructure, which put $120 million on its Allied Paving purchase and published the target’s revenue, even if the revenue figure moved between releases. One buyer shows its math. The other doesn’t have to, and so far hasn’t.
Two acquisitions announced in about two weeks, roughly 275 people added, zero dollars disclosed.