Mission Statement:
Hat Creek Company can and will provide uncompromised, professional, high quality service.  We will do this by educating the client on what needs to be done, and what options are available.  We will do this through vast experience and ongoing market research.

History
My name is David Knox, and I started Hat Creek Company in 2004, here in Knoxville, Tennessee.  I have been in the log home industry full time since 1995, and part to full time since 1989.  I was finishing college and working summer carpentry jobs when I worked on my first historic full chink cabin near Lewisburg, Tennessee.  At the time I was working for the Farm Building Company.  This is part of an old hippie commune down near Summertown, Tennessee.  The education and skill-sets I received from the artisans at The Farm have taken me farther than any other schooling I have gotten.

I bummed around in the early 1990’s stacking, and maintaining log homes, commercial salmon fishing, learning the timber-frame trade, and making use of my USFS red card.  I wasn’t getting rich monetarily, but I learned a lot about life and even more about people.

In 1995 I went to work for a national log home manufacturer here in Knoxville.  Here, over the next five years, I learned as much as I could about the industry.  I started as a timber-frame truss cutter, worked my through a sales position, and finally ended up for three years as the company technical and operations specialist.  This position saw me in the field quite a bit with the rest of my time developing technical and material data to be used by the sales reps and plant managers.  I also used this time to deepen my restoration skill set.

In December of 2000 I went to work for a national sealant and stain manufacturer based outside Denver, Colorado.  I was their representative in the upper mid-west, and spent the next two years in the field educating customers and applicators on the proper way to prep structures and apply sealants and stains.  This also where I learned what happens when prep and application is not done properly, or even what happens when poor construction practices are used to build a house or outbuilding.

In 2002 I went to work for probably the largest log home supply company in the United States.  They moved me back to east Tennessee to run their Southeastern distribution point.  It is here that I learned exactly how important customer service and customer education is to the success of a company.  The company in Denver has some of the best CS reps for a manufacturer, but they were only selling one product line.  Schroeder Log Home Supply carries multiple lines of sealants and stains, and all their Customer Service reps are educated to treat each client on individual terms, and provide them with exactly the right products.

This is what I have found to be the most important part of a service business.  The customer has to come first.

After two years with Schroeder, I was missing the field, and decided to put what I knew back to good use.  I am a carpenter and a field man not only by trade but also by spirit.  Sitting behind a desk is death for me.  So here I am, doing what I love, working with the best homeowners in the world.  That was one of the first things I learned when I came into the industry so many years ago.  Log homes are not just an investment for their owners.  They are the conglomeration of what most of the time is a life-long dream.  It makes my clients special, and my goal is to treat them as such.

HAT CREEK COMPANY
P.O. BOX 31566
KNOXVILLE, TN 37930
PH: 865.604.8127
email: daveknox@hatcreekcompany.com