My name is Eddie Jacobus. I am a young 60 year old man who grew up in a contractor/builder environment. I have been a homeowner in Parsippany, NJ for 25 years, raising two boys in the Parsippany school system where my wife and I were active in many school activities and clubs. My father was a builder and my mother did kitchen & baths. I learned residential roofing in 1970 at the age of 15 when I started working after school and weekends for Jim Wilson Roofing in Kearny, NJ. A few years later I began working as a roofer full-time for various firms as part of a “shape” crew and did so until I landed a foreman position for Hi-Lo Roofing in Fairfield, NJ. I worked for several years in that capacity until an opportunity came to buy out a problem partner in a struggling roofing company Don Luby Roofing and become a 49% owner.

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Don and I built the company back into a thriving residential and light commercial roofing company, later adding siding and carpentry to our services. In the early 1980s we started another company that specialized in restoring and rebuilding fire and storm damaged homes, First General of Essex, working as the “approved” or “house” contractor for Prudential and several other major insurance companies.  Don Luby Roofing still thrives today, surviving several recessions and remaining known for its high quality workmanship.

 

In the 1990s I left the contracting business to take the reins of a local wholesale distributor of building materials, aRZee Supply Corp of NJ, which I and a hand-picked staff of extraordinary people turned into a $40 million dollar industry leader.

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In 2010 I left aRZee after it was sold to a large national chain. aRZee was extremely successful and profitable every year prior to the acquisition. We were the sum of our parts. One by one these parts were dismantled and eliminated to fit corporate computer models of building material warehousing. The new company had their own way of doing things, putting actual customer service on the back-burner despite slogans and “mission statements” attesting to it. This they did well.

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Soon after, I contacted one of my ex-partners Thomas Glynn from the 1980s who was successfully running AURORA Home & Commercial Services, Inc. and we became equal partners. Tom recently retired and we dissolved the corporation. I acquired Fast Gutter, a gutter company out of West Orange, and merged it with AURORA to become Fast Roofing & Gutter.