05/17/2026
After nearly four decades, ACE, Inc. is coming to a close.
Our online auction of equipment, trucks, tools, and inventory ends Tuesday, May 19th. Watching the pieces of a lifetime of work line up under auction numbers is a strange feeling. Steel, diesel, mud, fiber, conduit, late nights, impossible deadlines, emergency calls, victories, losses. A company becomes more than a company after 38 years. It becomes part of your identity.
Many people have asked me why I decided to close ACE.
The answer began the day before my brother Steve died in 2020.
I made him a promise that I would give the company five more years. I gave it six.
What followed was one of the most difficult chapters of my life. Overnight, I inherited both field and office responsibilities and had to learn parts of the business from a completely different perspective. I understood the contracts, the numbers, and what it took to make projects profitable, but suddenly I was also operating equipment hands-on, solving field problems in real time, and carrying the weight of every decision alone while the world itself was shutting down during a pandemic.
Loyalty shifted. Familiar faces disappeared. New faces became ACE. Everything had to be proven all over again.
Within the first year, I experienced setbacks and disappointments that tested me far beyond business. Some people underestimated me. Others saw opportunity in chaos. Promises were broken. Handshakes suddenly seemed to apply only one direction. At times it felt less like running a company and more like surviving open water during a storm where every wave carried another challenge behind it.
But ACE survived.
In fact, despite everything, the company produced two of the strongest revenue years in its history during one of the hardest economic periods imaginable. That mattered to me. Not because of ego, but because I needed to prove to myself that I could carry the weight and finish what I promised my brother I would finish.
And I did.
Now it’s time to move forward instead of holding on.
Last month I buried my mother. Soon, one way or another, I will finally put my brother to rest beside our mother and father where he belongs and where he wanted to be. Some things in life should have always been simple, but life has a way of testing even the most basic acts of peace and closure.
As for me, retirement is no longer an idea somewhere off in the distance. It’s real now.
I’m heading to Fort Lauderdale for sunshine, salt air, calmer water, and a life no longer measured by emergency locates, project deadlines, and midnight phone calls. Out of the five major things I needed to accomplish before leaving Atlanta, the liquidation of ACE’s assets marks number three on the list. Only two remain.
Neither involve holding onto the past.
One is selling a house. The other is finishing something deeply personal that I started long ago, a story that at times probably sounded too unbelievable to be true while I was living it.
And then… maybe I finally exhale.
To everyone who worked for ACE, supported ACE, hired us, believed in us, or stood beside me over the years, thank you. Truly. You helped build something real, and in today’s world that means more than ever.
If you’re looking for quality equipment, tools, trucks, specialty utility gear, or simply want to take part in the final chapter of a company that spent nearly four decades building infrastructure across the Southeast, I invite you to check out the auction before it closes Tuesday, May 19th.
The next chapters of my life may very well be written from the back of a boat somewhere under the Florida sun.
And for the first time in a very long time… that sounds just about right.
Fiber Optic Contactor Retirement Auction-ACE, INC A complete operation, not a partial liquidation! In Co-Operation with Atlanta Bid Auction Company Auction Preview: Thursday May 14th and Saturday May 16th from 11 til 2pm- 2000 Manchester Street NE, Atlanta, GA 30324. Located across from 6ft Under -b...
