Reese Fullerton - Turning a Skill into a Passion

What if I don't go to college? That's the question that we've been trying to answer. Reese Fullerton is going to tell us about his journey in the industry, how he took something that he cared about, a skill that he's good at, and turn that into a passion. Let's hear what he's got to say. Reese Fullerton from Canyon Marine Solutions.

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The Regional Maritime Training System (RMTS) was established using a $11 million (41%) Good Jobs Challenge Grant awarded by the Economic Development Administration. It is supported by $12.1 million (46%) provided through BlueForge Alliance in partnership with the U.S. Department of the Navy, $850,000 (3%) from the U.S. Department of Labor/ETA – Community Project Funding, and $3.5 million (10%) from non-federal sources.

Transcript

What if I don't go to college? That's the question that we've been trying to answer. Reese Fullerton is going to tell us about his journey in the industry, how he took something that he cared about, a skill that he's good at,
and turn that into a passion. Let's hear what he's got to say. Reese Fullerton from Canyon Marine Solutions.
Tell us what you do here. Canyon Marine Solutions started out as the distributor and tech rep for Thornton bearings. Thornton bearings is a company that, to keep it simple,
they make a polymer material. And now what we do is we take that polymer material and we turn it into everything from, you know, prop shaft bearings, rudder bearings,
deck equipment, you know, steering gear, any rotating equipment where you're normally using say a traditional rubber bronze back bearing or like a phenolic material and you're having failures we bring this material in it's self -lubricating polymer doesn't require any grease no oil there's no maintenance to it and we swap those out and make it to where we're you know decreasing the time of equipment or making sure that ships
aren't coming in the shipyard often to replace bearings? So all these bearing surfaces, all rotating equipment has got to be supported in some manner.
Those motors turn, it create a lot of friction or in some cases there's friction plus they penetrate the hull of a ship or a boat, right? That's what keeps the water out of the people tank.
So There's a lot of stress on this. So it seems like it's a really simple thing, but it's not. And these surfaces exist all around us, right? It's our cars. It's the conveyor belt at the grocery store that carries our groceries up to the cashier.
It's the escalators, the elevators that we ride. If it's turning, there's a bearing surface somewhere. And this polymer is not a simple material.
It's not a simple material. It's a proprietary material. And we actually don't even know the complete makeup of the material. So like when we were talking before,
like when I go up there to visit the manufacturer, I mean, it's closed curtain. We don't see how it's made. We have a general idea of how it's made.
We just don't know what's in it. So we don't know the complete makeup, the ingredients list, if you will, of the material. But we know it works. of an inch.
I mean, it's very, very, very tight, tight tolerances. There's no margin of error there. And these are very sophisticated, complex,
and critical systems. Yes. How did you get into this business? So basically, I had worked for the previous distributor and due to,
you changes in their path. They were more like, I guess, industrial fluid ceiling focused, if you will. I was, long story short,
I was going to actually go work directly for Thorndon, and that was that was looking like my path. And then I always wanted to start my own business, but it's always been,
you know, what am I going to do? Where am I going to go? How do, you know, what's this business going to be. And one day I just kind of said, hey, what if we become your new distributor? And so we worked through it with Thornton,
and they were very happy to do it. And now we became the new distributor for them. How old were you when you started Canyon Marine Solutions? Oh, I was 32.
Yeah, 32. So with 32 years old, you go into business with simple but simple. and my 99 % of my job path has always been in the marine industry so just kind of made sense that way tell me of that tell me about that period of time from high school to when you started Canyon Marine Solutions what were you doing in there in high school you know I wasn't sure what I wanted to do I knew that college wasn't the path
that I was going to take because I just you know like most kids in in high school they don't know what they want to do a whole lot of real technical skill involved there.
No, no, not at all. It was just, it was a lot of sanding, a lot of sanding, and a lot of just,
you know, painting, you know, a lot of fiberglass, just basically just rolling on fiberglass all day. I mean, it was, yeah, it was very, very entry level stuff, not very technical at all,
so. And how long did you do that before, before you got the call up to start doing more complex work? We were such a small team that, you know, we were all kind of involved in different things.
So even, you know, the owner of the business who designs the boats and builds the boats, him and his kind of, you know, lead guy, if you will, I mean, they were even doing painting and sanding and everything as well but it was one I mean it was neat to see that to see somebody you know who who's not only designed it but also still have the passion to get in there and build it and and do all of the work even
if it's the you know the the nitty gritty stuff if you will and but it also gave me the opportunity to shadow them when they were doing more of the complex technical stuff so it was pretty quick for me to get in and at least be able to kind of shadow them and see what they were doing and get an idea how things were being done.
It's kind of a unique feature being in the marine industry. There's still an awful lot of shops out there where it is kind of all hands on deck at some point.
Right. Right. Even, you know, we've talked with other people in a pipe shop, for example, where the owner still gets in there every now and then and drops a shield and he's got he's got to lay a bead.
Yeah, right. So. different things like that depending on the job and then um yeah and then from there um economy 2008 economy wasn't good and wages were getting low and people were uh you know not really interested in buying a couple million dollar sport fishing boats and that's when i uh went off to my plan was to go get my captain's license so i wanted to just go get my captain's license I had the sea time.
I wanted to be, you know, charter fishing captain or eventually, you know, captain a yacht, something like that. And went to Mid -Atlantic Maritime and went in there to just,
you know, I took the class to get my 100 ton. I only had the sea time for my, I believe I had a 50 ton in the very beginning. And I was fortunate while I was there to,
there was a lady there who, she kind of handled, like, career placement, career development, you know, kind of that sort of, she's almost like the guidance counselor of the Maritime Academy,
I guess, if you will. And she said, hey, you know, why stop there? Why don't you go get your A -B? You can get your, you know, your STCW. You can do all these, you know, certifications. And all those skills.
Abel -body semen is kind of the entry -level job if you're going to work on a commercial ship of any of any sort. You're handling the lines, you're operating basic equipment. You know how to operate safely,
and that's part of what the STCW certificate is also, right? How to operate safely. Entry level for somebody who doesn't have that background or isn't familiar with those systems.
And that school is located right here in Norfolk on the Virginia Beach line. That's right. And it's it's a great example of everything from entry level all the way up to you know unlimited master and you talked about the 50 year of the 100 ton license and that's that basically says what size vessel you're able to operate.
Yeah so she she kind of put me down that path and at the time you know the only trick was is, you know, when you lay everything out on what I needed and then I saw the cost of it,
I was like, I just, you know, I can't afford this. I mean, I was making, I don't know, I think I was maybe a little above minimum wage at the time. And, you know, so I got a little bit of money from some bonds that my granddad would give us every year for our birthday.
And that helped pay for, I think, most of one class. You know, somebody had actually backed into my truck at the time. told me you know you can apply for a grant and you know you'll write an essay and you'll apply and you know the state could help you pay for school if you basically I think it was I would agree to work for like a state or federal you know agency company whatever afterwards so I did that and got
the grant and they paid for my school and I came out with a AB and STCW and my 50 ton at the time and then just started,
you know, filling out applications. I probably filled out 100 applications to anywhere and everywhere I could find. Talked about the cost of those classes,
which when you're making a minimum wage, that's not insignificant, but it's still a lot less than a college degree. Oh, yeah, significantly less.
Yeah. Like maybe a semester worth of college. I mean,
I was, you know, I was less than 10 grand. It might have been, I mean, maybe $6 ,000 or $7 ,000, I think, at the time.
I mean, yeah. So for me, it was a lot, but in the, you know, when you're looking at it as a whole, it's compared to going to college, I mean, yeah, it was way less. And then, you know,
and then when I fast forward to like when I started working on the ships. I mean, with my base salary and overtime, I mean, I was, I think I was making 45,
50 grand a year. So, you scraped the money together, but didn't really have any debt at the end of this, but you go out and you're working and you're right. You're not in the red. You're in the black right from right out the gate.
Right out the gate. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Where'd you go to work at first? So after, after I wasn't getting any responses at the time from all of the and Atmospheric Association?
Yep, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So they called and said, you know, we've got a spot, it's an entry -level spot. I just remembered what they, what their term was that it was a general vessel assistant is what it was.
It was very like low man on totem pole, general vessel assistant. They said, you know, are you interested? You know, absolutely. And after we got to talking a little bit.
He had kind of told me, you know, we have a lot of guys on deck. There's a lot of guys that want to be on deck and then it worked their way up to the bridge and drive the ship and do all that, but would you have any interest in going into the engineering side?
And, you know, I grew up around with my dad and, you know, uncles and everything. They're all like very mechanical. So I said, yeah, you know, getting into the engine room and turning wrenches and and learning that sounds great and the money was a little bit better um which i could say like now with knowing what how engineers do the money's definitely better um and then the schedule was better it made it to where i
could kind of pick and choose for the most part what ship i wanted to work on um so i started out on a ship in mississippi and pascagoula on the pices and um i was very fortunate to start out on that show.
couple weeks it was go clean that up that spilled go clean that up that needs to be painted they're kind of seeing hey what's this kid all about you know does he want to learn does he want to be here whatever skill sets kind of had to prove yourself a little bit had to prove myself a little bit you're the new guy on the team and you got to show that you're willing to that's right exactly exactly and then from
there it just turned into you know everything I would go up and ask you know I want to learn to weld you know So he would say, yeah, let's go. He'd fire everything up, and he would teach me and just let me,
I mean, on watch, he'd say, hey, after everything's done, you can come in here and just practice, just sit here and practice on the welding table. So on watch is that designated, like the ship going to sea for weeks at a time,
your work, the ship operates 24 hours a day. That's right. So your watch is the period of time when you're actually at work and the rest of the time is kind of your free time. Exactly. Yeah, it is. So in your free time,
he said, come down here and I'll tell you. And then I made a little powder -coating booth.
If I were to go back and see, if this stuff's still hanging on the wall to this day on that ship, I'm going to be surprised. But made a powder -coating wall. Some of those wells a little ugly? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was bubble gum.
Just, yeah, it was terrible. But I did learn a lot. Now, if you asked me to weld today, I forgot a lot of it, too. But it was just it was great to be able to have somebody that was willing to teach he saw that i was willing to learn they were willing to teach um and then you know we had a project on uh on the main engines where the you know i think it was valve lash and injectors needed to be seated and he
said here you go here's the tools here the here's the manual you guys have at it figure it out you know i'm i'm here to answer questions and we got We got it done. Got an award from the ship because we,
you know, saved X amount of dollars so a contractor didn't have to come in and do it. And yeah, so it was great to have that as my first ship that I ever worked on.
And I actually rotated on and off that one for almost two years because they just kept, they literally would call me or text me when they got back and say hey when are you off leave and then they'd put in the paperwork for me to come back so they just kept bringing me back so you built your reputation and now you're you're the kind of person they want to work with they're coming to you saying come come back to
us right exactly that's a great place to be and yeah pretty young age oh yeah yeah absolutely yep I had worked uh let's see I'd been every let's see I've been Pascagoula I worked out of Texas I worked out of Portland Maine,
Rhode Island. keep in touch with him today.
In the beginning, we didn't click at all. He just had a teaching style that I just could not, like, wrap my head around. But it was funny because eventually it was more my fault than his.
I think I had to, like, you know, swallow my pride a little bit and then understand, like, how to work with his methods. And when I did, that was another guy that I learned an unreal amount from.
But that, that ship was great because, you know, ride beach cruisers around Midway Island and that was amazing because there's still a lot of stuff there from you know from back you know during World War II and I mean it was like just pretty great experiences to get on a ship sail halfway around the world and oh yeah get to see some things that maybe people read about it a history book which you actually get to
live it see it touch it oh yeah it was great and then and then you know with fishing you know we would get into the areas where we were allowed to fit. And I mean,
man, we would bring her, just bring her this fish and she would make unreal, like, sashimi and everything. I mean, it was great. And then one of the lead,
you know, lead guys on deck, he actually grew up in South Carolina, but in high school, he worked for a, he worked at a sushi restaurant. So, I mean, just watching him with a knife just do his thing and make just these great platters of sashimi and sushi and everything.
I mean, we ate great. Um,
I got definitely support. I mean, my parents were, if I would have had something that I wanted to go to college for, they were definitely supportive of me going to college. But it was,
they, they kind of left it up to me and my decision, you know, to say, if you don't have anything you want to go to college for. I mean, then, you know, what are you going to go to college for,
right? So they, they were very supportive of my decision for sure. And, and you know I just couldn't I couldn't do it I was sitting there thinking I knew that if I went to college there was like the one school that always like stuck in my head was was you and C and I'm like I could do like you and C Wilmington and then I could go surfing right and then but what am I going to go to school for it I do remember
going on like the website at one point and like this is like I vaguely remember having like a conversation of like going to college for like Pulp.
but sophisticated items made out of complex polymers that are being developed in the secret lab, right? Right. Because it's proprietary, and it's not basic wood and rubber and cork and metal that it used to be anymore.
This is sophisticated chemistry, really close tolerances. You've done some work here in this shop that as you described it to me before, we both agreed, a lot of that is engineering level work.
Like the kind of things in the reach out and ask,
you know, can you design a dripless shaft seal? Can you design a bronze back bearing with your polymer material in it? And I just, I loved the challenge of it.
I loved the industry, and I have a lot of respect for the people that were asking me to see if I can do it. So, yeah, I said, let's give it a shot. And I literally just bought everything on the market.
I mean, everything I could find. I'd spent weeks just Googling, you know, dripless shaft seals. And if anybody had one, I bought it. And I took it back here and sat here at this workbench for probably, you know,
eight months in between our normal, like, day -to -day operations. And I took everything off of it that I didn't like, didn't think would work well, kept the stuff on there that I think would.
And then I would, you know, reach out to those guys and say, hey, I've got this prototype. This is how it is. What do you think? They would give me some insight on changes that needed to be made. And it's just,
yeah, it's turned into what it is now. And it's, you know, I didn't reinvent the wheel by any means. I just took, I took things that just slight changes that needed to be made that made a huge difference.
And that's what we did. So I love that part of the story when somebody tells me about how they innovate something because a lot of people think innovation is I started with a blank sheet of paper and I came up with a great idea.
And it's really not. Right. You took some other through -hull fittings, took the things you liked about each one, discarded things you didn't,
and then built a brand new one with the best features, not that you took anybody's property, but you took those features and figured out how to combine different elements together in that.
Yeah, exactly. And then we also just, I tell all of my customers, you know, feedback, good and bad, give me feedback.
Call me on the phone, yell at me for 20 minutes, and tell me how much this is garbage so I can go back to the drawing board and fix it. Like, this, like, the name of the company's Canyon Marine Solutions,
like, it would, it would just be, like, arrogant of us to just come up with a solution and say, here you go, promise you it works because I said so, or because the math equation over here says so,
but you're telling me, you know, sorry, it doesn't. Like, give me feedback, and then we'll just constantly improve and evolve and see what we can do. And that's been great because so far everything's been fantastic.
And then, you know, we've got a couple little tweaks and things that we find that we're going to make better, but it's just all about just figuring it out how to do it and then make it better.
And all that comes from just the excitement and passion that I have and we have of the industry that we're working in. Do you have a mechanical engineer or a naval architect that you work with?
No. You've never had to call one for any of these things that you've done. No, I've got some people that I could call if I really ran into a question that ran into an issue,
right, that was just really stumping me. But a lot of the information I get comes from, so I bought the book Applied Naval Architecture,
which is you know,
I've got the one of, you know, propulsion, shafting, bearing lubrication, things like that. So if I run into something that I just can't figure out through my experience and I'll flip through that and see what I can find.
But no, we don't have a naval architect or an engineer or anybody on payroll. It's probably going to scare some people when they hear this. But no,
it really just comes from just hands -on experience. The way to learn and the different avenues and the access to information has never been greater that maybe you don't need four years,
but now that you know you can buy the textbook that they're using in those classes and just study at the point that you need on that one element, get smart on it,
and then iterate your product. And your products are pretty important. And again, it's the water on the outside. time Michael Jordan has moved to that builder and this is the first time I've had his his boat so you know you're talking about him today man hey let me know like I'm gonna come see you shake your hand meet you at least you know but no he does not know I haven't had a chance to meet him yet but uh but
those are things that like I mean I it's rewarding across the board for sure and there's there's people out there that I have like so much respect for and excitement to be able to work with that unless you're in the industry no one's ever going to know who they are but at least when i you know when i'm doom scrolling on my phone and i'm seeing my instagram page filled with you know michael jordan's new boat i can
look at it and be like i've invented something myself on that boat like he's running my stuff like That's wild. It's crazy to think about.
Man, I don't even know if this is a valid question to ask now. First of all, how long you've been in business and what's, what do you see in the next five years? So Canyon, we've been in business for four years.
When we started this business, COVID, like, I mean, right, I mean, COVID was right there in the very beginning. So, like, you know, we've got like essentially a whole year there where,
you know, you couldn't go to the shipyards and make visits for a while. You couldn't do, and you remember this. There was not a whole lot you could do for a good period there of time.
And we were fortunate to where, you know, the, the bearings that we make for, and that Thornd makes and that we sell are their mission critical. I mean,
these ships have got to have them. So that kept us going and kept us afloat. No pun intended. Right, no pun intended. That's right. Yeah. So, and I didn't,
you know, it was just, just me here for the longest time. So you started out as a kind of a one -man shop doing this. Yes. And you've grown now in the past four years to. So yeah,
I mean, we grew from a, from a revenue standpoint. I mean, just last year, we grew four times over on revenue it was crazy it was crazy it was it was a lot i mean because there's also with a lot of money coming in there's a lot of money that needs to go out to get that business too so it's you start dealing with numbers that you never thought you would deal with you know like this is stressful stuff but it's
got to be fun you're smiling you're laughing about it it's a lot of fun it really is i mean that's that my whole you know philosophy i guess on this business would be like if go to college or join the family business or don't,
they can at least see my path and see, you know, what I worked for and built and, you know, get something out of that and be like, it's pretty awesome.
They might not even like boats ever, who knows what they're into, but they could just say, hey, what dad did was pretty cool, so. I got a feeling your kids are gonna like boats. Probably. Probably.
Yeah. Rees, that's great. Thanks so much for your time today. You've got a great story. Obviously, very proud of what you do. You're doing really important and interesting work,
and I appreciate your time today. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for coming. This has been fun. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you. So it's been great.