G & E Dock and Seawall offers 35 years’ experience

Published 6:45 pm Thursday, April 19, 2018

As the warm, pleasant days of spring grow steadily hotter, one local business gives its customers a way to combat the long, humid temperatures of summer.

“February to June is our business time,” said Larry Ethridge, owner of Milledgeville’s G & E Dock and Seawall. “For the past three or four years, it’s been heavier from February to June. There hasn’t really been any slack time, but it beats the heck out of having to look for it.”

For the past 35 years, Ethridge has been constructing docks, seawalls, and other wooden structures for customers in his Milledgeville business. In his more than three decades building structures for clients in the Lake Country and around the State of Georgia, Ethridge has gained a wealth of experience on a variety of different projects.

“I worked maintenance at the [Plant Branch] power plant for about 25 years, and after about 12 years of doing this part-time, I left Southern Company and went full-time,” he said. “We do docks, boathouses, seawalls, decks, grating — pretty much anything. We don’t really have a specialty, and the business is pretty well balanced out [between each service].”

Although a large part of Ethridge’s business (as well as the company’s name) comes from shoreline structures, G & E’s service is not limited to docks and seawalls. With decades of experience making decks, porches, and other home additions, Ethridge is able to tackle a wide range of different projects.

“Right now I’m fixing to meet a couple about a freestanding car port, and then I’ve got to go to Reynolds [of Lake Oconee] because we’ve got a 1,000-foot seawall project going on up there,” he said Wednesday morning, on his plans for the rest of the rest of the day. “We probably do three- to four-hundred feet a week.”

With his office located on Meriwether Road just a stone’s throw away from Lake Sinclair, a large part of G & E’s business comes from around the Lake County area. Although much of Ethridge’s clientele is centered on Middle Georgia, G & E’s reputation for quality travels to places well outside the surrounding counties.

“Aside from Lake Sinclair and Lake Oconee, our primary places are Lake Jackson and a small lake in Bibb County called Lake [Tobesofkee], but we do work on small ponds or anywhere else,” said Ethridge. “We’ve been at a small lake in Perry for about three weeks in the Flat Creek Reserve neighborhood, but we’ll pretty well go wherever they pay us. We’ve been to South Carolina, Swainsboro, and wherever. It’s not a very common trade.”

While docks and shoreline structures may outwardly seem to be relatively cut-and-dry projects,  the process is actually more time consuming than many customers anticipate. Although different counties have different rules for the construction of waterfront structures, every boathouse built on a public lake requires a permit from government (and Georgia Power) entities. As a former employee of Georgia Power, Ethridge is in a unique position among deck and seawall specialists due to his working relationship with the company, and handles all Georgia Power permitting for any project for which permits are required.

“The first thing you have to do if you’re on Sinclair or Oconee is to go to Georgia Power and get a permit,” said Ethridge. “We’ll look at [the project] and evaluate what’s got to be done, and give people an estimated price. It could take a day or it could take two or three weeks, depending on if the person has done any research and knows all the permits they need.”

After more than 30 years of building structures for local homeowners, Ethridge has found success in a taxing and physically demanding trade. With three decades under his belt and a reputation that crosses state boundaries, it’s safe to say the G & E owner is in a better place than where he began.

“Early on, it was a lot more manual labor,” said Ethridge of his first days in the dock and seawall business. “We do more with equipment now than we did when we were building then.”

G & E Dock and Seawall is located at 257 Meriwether Road in Milledgeville. For hours, estimates, and more information, call G & E Dock and Seawall at 478-968-5530.