The Schank family has been operating Twin City Roofing in Gering since 1956 with a goal of providing quality roofing and giving back to the community.
Charles Schank started the company in 1956 and his sons Terry and Richard took up the family business as they got old enough. The company incorporated in 1986, and Terry eventually bought out Richard and his dad in 2004.
Terry Schank said giving back to the community is critical for his family. A July 1993 tornado tore through their home and destroyed a newly-built barn. Within hours, Schank said, friends and people from the community were there to help out, salvaging anything possible. Terry said he and his wife Paula were so touched by the generosity and efforts of the community to help out people in the neighborhood that they’ve always looked to do what they can to help others.
“I follow in my mother and father’s footsteps,” Terry Schank said. “They gave their soul and body to organizations.”
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Charles and Willa both had cancer, so organizations fighting that disease are important to Terry Schank. Charles was also a member of the local Moose and Elks Clubs among other civic organizations. The company recently donated $100 from each roofing job over the course of a year to the United Way, totaling a $52,000 donation.
Terry Schank got his work ethic from his parents and has carried it forward through his 44 years in the business.
“I’m an early riser and a late worker, so that fits in with the roofing business,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been a lot of work, a lot of good customers.”
Maintaining the family business is special to Schank.
“I cherish it because I still have a lot of the same customers my dad had,” he said. “It’s good to know that my family is behind me for some of the stuff that we do, as big as we’ve grown and the success we’ve had.”
Over the years, Twin City Roofing has done work for countless residential and business projects along with cities and school systems. They recently were heavily involved in work at Chadron State College.
“My toughest job we’ve ever done is last year we did the barrel roofs at Armstrong Gymnasium at Chadron,” Schank said. “It was supposed to be about a seven-month duration, and we finished it in three. It turned out really good, and the college is really happy with our performance.”
Schank said he enjoyed a project at Scottsbluff High School that involved metal wall panels and trim as well as the roofs.
“We like doing new construction,” Schank said. “We like metal roofing, metal siding and flat roofs themselves.”
Most of Twin City Roofing’s staff are long-term employees, and their knowledge of the industry would be difficult to replace, Schank said.
Ease of application in different systems has made the roofing business more worker-friendly, Schank said. Does he miss the old days?
“No, because back in the day when I first started we didn’t own a forklift,” he said. “We didn’t own equipment like we have now. I’ve got 11 forklifts and 30-some trucks.”
While it’s easy to drive through the area and spot a house or building he’s worked on, Schank said he’s seeing more second round jobs he’s done.
“The funny thing is, over the last 10-15 years, we have re-roofed a lot of the stuff I had done when I was on one of the crews, which is satisfying,” he said. “We had the school in Edgemont, South Dakota, that we just finished this week, and I had put that roof on in 1986. It just needed replaced this year.”