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Evaluate viability, define scope, and establish realistic budgets before committing to design or construction.
135 Years of Being Trusted With the Toughest Jobs
CR Meyer has been in continuous operation since 1888. That kind of longevity in industrial construction doesn't happen by accident — it happens by building a reputation for doing what you say you're going to do, project after project, decade after decade.
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What’s Kept CR Meyer in Business for More Than 135 Years?
135 years in business isn’t something that happens to a company; it’s something a company earns — project by project, relationship by relationship, through the kind of sustained performance that survives economic downturns, industry disruptions, and generational transitions.
CR Meyer has earned it. And the company that exists today — larger, more capable, and more deeply experienced than at any point in its history — is built on the same foundation Charles Rudolph Meyer established in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1888.
From Masonry to Industrial General Contractor
CR Meyer began as a masonry business. Charles Rudolph Meyer, a German immigrant with skilled hands and a reputation for honest work, built churches, schools, mansions, and eventually paper mills across Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. By 1928 — when CR Meyer took over a paper mill project after another contractor abandoned it — the company had become something more: a self-performing general contractor capable of managing complete construction projects from the ground up. That pivot was not planned. It was earned — by demonstrating that CR Meyer could handle what others couldn't.
Proving CR Meyer Could Handle Heavy Civil and Hydroelectric Work
Post WWII industrialization required huge investments in hydroelectric power. CR Meyer and Sons Co. contributed mightily to multiple power generation projects. Peavy Falls, located in Iron County of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, was built from 1941-1943 by a swarm of CR Meyer and Sons Co. or Wisconsin-Michigan Light and Power Company.
Self-Performed Work Beats the Clock
Wisconsin Tissue Mills of Menasha, Wisconsin, contracted with CR Meyer and Sons Co. in 1982 to construct a new machine room and erect its new 65,000-ton annual capacity Beloit paper machine (PM#3) and Yankee dryer. Completed 44 days ahead of schedule, the expansion was widely respected in the industry as CR Meyer and Sons Co.'s trademark combination of contracting, engineering, machine erection and construction management skills.
Built Into the Foundation of Paper Valley's Growth
Much of Kimberly-Clark's early 140-year history of expanding production and innovation in Wisconsin's Paper Valley region was performed within mills constructed and equipped by CR Meyer and Sons Co. Neenah Paper, the Kimberly Mill, the Whiting Mill, and the Niagara Mill were built by CR Meyer tradesmen who then went on to set their paper machines and ancillary equipment.
Building for Industry's Most Demanding Environments
Through the mid-twentieth century, CR Meyer built a reputation in the environments that defined American heavy industry: hydroelectric power plants, paper mills, manufacturing facilities. The decision to hire CR Meyer's first structural engineer — made under Harry Meyer's leadership in the late 1930s — signaled an organization that was investing in capability, not just capacity. That investment pattern has never stopped. Each decade brought new capabilities: computer-assisted design in the early 1990s, expanded satellite offices in the late 1990s, pipe fabrication in 2011, electrical services as a self-performed trade in recent years.
Recognition That Reflects Sustained Performance
CR Meyer's ENR rankings — consistently in the Top 400 Contractors nationally, top 20 industrial contractors, and top pulp and paper contractor — are not the result of a single exceptional year. They are the product of sustained, consistent performance across decades of complex industrial work.
The Generational Nature of CR Meyer's Client Relationships
Perhaps the most compelling evidence of CR Meyer's track record is not a ranking or a milestone — it's the clients who've worked with CR Meyer across multiple decades, and in some cases across multiple generations of their own leadership. When a plant manager who inherited a CR Meyer relationship from his predecessor is now handing that relationship to his successor, something meaningful has been demonstrated: CR Meyer has consistently earned the trust of industrial owners over time, not just in individual project moments.
