How John M. Yantis carried his family, put himself through school, and built a San Antonio company from $10,000 and a handshake.

When I was little I called my grandfather Boggie. He hated it. I tried Grandpa, and he hated that too, because anything that sounded old was out. So he gave me a choice: call him Johnny. That is what I have called him ever since. If you called him Mr. Yantis, he would correct you on the spot. He was John, or as he liked to put it, just plain old John. Nothing fancy, and he never wanted anyone to think he was special.

That is worth knowing up front, because almost everything people in San Antonio now associate with the Yantis name traces back to a man who refused to make a fuss about himself.

He Did What Needed to Be Done

The Yantis family has been in Texas for six generations, ever since James Yantis came to the state after the Civil War. Johnny grew up in San Antonio, and he started working young. He had a paper route. He laced shoes. He worked at Olmos Pharmacy. He unloaded lumber at a railyard. The family was poor in those days, and whatever Johnny had, he earned himself. That is how a kid with his start in life made it to Texas A&M.

Then, when he was 19, his father, Buster Yantis, died. Johnny came home from College Station to take care of his mother and his younger brother. He did not take a break from school to do it. He worked full time and carried 18 hours at St. Mary’s at the same time, until he could get back to A&M.

I never once heard him complain about any of it. That was simply what the situation called for, so that is what he did.

While he was at A&M he married the love of his life, my grandmother Patsy, and she helped support him through school. He graduated in 1953, served as an Army artillery officer and assistant post engineer at Fort Sill, then came home to work as a project engineer for H.B. Zachry Company. After that he spent eight years selling heavy equipment for Contractors Machinery. Selling to contractors, he realized he wanted to be one.

Betting on Himself

In 1965, at 33, Johnny started his own company with $10,000. Nine thousand of it was borrowed. He had a young family, no safety net, and a partner named Norman Harwell. He did not treat it as a gamble. He knew he would make it work, because he had already spent his whole life making things work.

“We made $40,000 in our first month,” he told the San Antonio Business Journal years later. “We were off to the races after that.”

The early years were lean and personal. In 1970, Hurricane Celia was tearing through Corpus Christi. Yantis owned exactly one excavator, it needed a part, and there was a job in Austin the next morning. So Johnny drove into the hurricane to get the part. As my uncle Tom put it, in those days the machine “had to run, or nothing would get done.”

Passing Inspection Was Never the Bar

The story I think about most happened on a subdivision job. A stretch of asphalt paving passed the City’s inspection. On paper, the job was done. It did not meet Johnny’s standard, though, so that was that. It came out and went back in, and Yantis paid for it.

His rule was simple: put fairness and honesty first in every dealing, and the rest of the business follows. He believed there was no statute of limitations on bad work. That is why, by the 1980s, more than 90 percent of the company’s work came through negotiation with repeat and referral clients rather than open bids. People came back because they trusted the handshake.

He also cared who was standing next to him. “The most important thing when building a company is to have good people,” he said. “Value not only their experience and credentials, but their character.” Aggies never lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do, and he made sure everyone who worked for him understood that applied at Yantis too.

From One Excavator to $100 Million

From that one excavator, Johnny built a contractor that did highway work for the Texas Department of Transportation and private work for developers who came back job after job. John Schaefer of Schaefer-Burdick Homes was one of his largest clients, and Castle Hills Forest, Northchase and Woodridge all went in with Yantis crews. “I never need to worry about being treated fairly by them,” Schaefer said.

My father Mike and my uncle Tom joined in the early ’80s and grew the company’s subdivision work for developers across San Antonio. By 2000 Yantis was about a $40 million company.

I joined full time in 2002, right after graduating from A&M, and got to spend my first years in the business working alongside Johnny before he retired in 2007. I brought Yantis into lot development for the national homebuilders. Johnny also taught me how to organize mass grading, and that opened the door to major sitework projects like the Dollar General Distribution Center and the Carrier warehouse. Within a few years the company passed $100 million a year with more than 500 employees. Through all of it, Johnny was my first call any time I faced something that needed an expert answer. His guidance gave me the confidence to go after airport work and other public road jobs.

When your plane lands at San Antonio International Airport, you are looking at Yantis work; the company completed 15 major projects there. Drive Loop 410 or Wurzbach Parkway, pass Six Flags Fiesta Texas, or turn into a neighborhood in Stone Oak, Sonterra, Camino Real or Alamo Ranch, and you will find more of it. For decades, a good share of this city’s growth ran over pipe and pavement Yantis put in the ground.

“I make commitments knowing that Yantis will deliver. I don’t lose a night’s sleep. I pick the best. And Yantis is the best.” Marty Wender, Developer, Westover Hills

Johnny and Me

Johnny and I connected over two things more than anything else: golf and Texas A&M. From about age eight, I was at his side for every home game and a lot of road games. He was always the van driver. Twenty people would pile in, and I rode on the dashboard. I learned a lot from those trips, including some words and stories a kid probably should not have heard.

He never knew a stranger. When I was about 10, we were walking across the driving range at Oak Hills when he spotted a man hitting balls he did not recognize. That rarely happened at Oak Hills. He had to go introduce himself right then, and by the time they were done talking, the man was playing nine holes with us.

Golf was a fixture of his week. Every Wednesday he played with the same group of friends, including one he had met in grade school. The two of them went to A&M at the same time and stayed friends all these years.

That is how he taught me to treat people. Be the first to say hello. Help when someone asks. Always do the right thing. I never heard him turn down a request for a ride, an extra ticket, or any other help he could give. To this day, people tell me stories all the time about how John Yantis helped them.

Johnny was a real contractor. He taught me that money is not made in the office; it is made in the field. He wanted me to learn by doing, so my summers in high school were spent on job sites. That is what got me to where I am today.

We also shared a deep love for running the company and doing things the right way. Johnny was the one person whose opinion meant the world to me, and letting him down was the scariest thing I could imagine. I did not want to be the one who fell short of what he had built, and that feeling made me better at the job every single day.

An Aggie Through and Through

To say Johnny loved Texas A&M is an understatement. He loved the school and he loved the people who went there. San Antonio has a deep network of Aggie engineers, developers and contractors, and he spent a lifetime building and honoring those relationships. All four of his children are Aggies.

He served on the executive committee of the 12th Man Foundation, and he and my grandmother established the Patsy and John Yantis ’53 Regents Scholars Student Assistance Fund for students who need the same kind of help he once did. Asked why, he answered the way you would expect: “To help Aggie students that are financially disadvantaged.”

The Surprise on the Balcony

In 2015 I put together his nomination for Texas A&M’s Distinguished Alumni Award, the highest honor the university gives a former student. He was not selected in 2016, but the committee told me they were keeping his package for 2017.

That year he got it. I told Johnny we were taking pictures for an article. When he got to the Yantis Company office, his family and friends were waiting on the balcony, along with the president of Texas A&M and a member of the Corps of Cadets, there to present him with the award. I could see the pride in his eyes. It is one of my favorite memories of him.

Two years later, the San Antonio A&M Club gave him the C.C. “Polly” Krueger ’12 Distinguished Service Award, which only 17 people had received before him. I had the honor of introducing him that night.

Quietly, and a Lot

Despite all of it, you would never hear about his success from him. He chaired the Valero Alamo Bowl in 2007, the year A&M played Penn State. He served on the board of Boysville, worked with the Optimist Club, gave two houses to Habitat for Humanity, and supported more than 50 organizations, from veterans and food banks to medical research and literacy. He served two terms as president of Oak Hills Country Club, during the years it hosted the Texas Open.

What the People He Built For Said

“They do what they say they will do and they take care of their business, which is why they take care of my business.” Robert Folsom, Former Mayor of Dallas, Folsom Investments

“Their honesty and integrity is unquestioned.” James H. Uptmore, Uptmore & Associates

“They weave a sense of honesty and integrity into every project, large or small.” Dr. Carl F. Raba, Jr., Raba-Kistner Consultants

“They always have the owners’ interest in mind.” Eugene H. Dawson, Pape-Dawson Consulting Engineers

“I never need to worry about being treated fairly by them.” John Schaefer, Schaefer-Burdick Homes

“They’ve never once let me down.” Herbert E. Karren, Karren Investments

From a Paper Route to Chairman Emeritus

After 1865 James Yantis brings the family to Texas after the Civil War

1953 Graduates from Texas A&M; commissioned in the U.S. Army, artillery, Fort Sill

1955 Project engineer, H.B. Zachry Company

1957 Equipment sales manager, Contractors Machinery

1965 Founds John Yantis Company with $10,000, $9,000 of it borrowed

1970 Drives into Hurricane Celia for a part to keep the company’s only excavator running

1975–85 Area chairman, Associated General Contractors

1977–83 Executive Committee, 12th Man Foundation

1986–88 Yantis named to the Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies in America

1988 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, San Antonio

1999 Inducted into the Texas A&M Lettermen’s Hall of Honor

2002 Grandson Mike joins the company full time after graduating from A&M

2005–07 Yantis named to the Aggie 100 three years running, tied as the oldest company on the list

2007 Chairman, Valero Alamo Bowl; retires and becomes Chairman Emeritus

2017 Texas A&M Distinguished Alumnus

2019 C.C. “Polly” Krueger ’12 Distinguished Service Award, San Antonio A&M Club

Why It Still Matters

When people move to San Antonio and start doing business here, they often find out the Yantis name has been in the middle of this city’s growth since 1965. What I want them to know is where that name came from: a kid who worked every job he could find, carried his family when he had to, and never complained once. When he decided he could do it himself, he knew he would succeed, and he did. I named my son after him.

Over sixty years of Yantis building San Antonio. Same John Yantis handshake.