Based in Middlesboro right off of U.S. 25E behind Pizza Hut, MidSouth Power Services has grown to become a major regional electric utility construction company servicing Kentucky, Tennessee and surrounding states.

It was started as Chuck’s Construction, which was founded in 1982 and the name was later shortened to Chu-Con Incorporated.

The company’s founder Chuck Sharpe still serves as the president and CEO. He says MidSouth’s roots date back even further.

“Ben Hickman got myself and Chris Hickman started in business together in 1978. We worked four or five years together before Chris went back to college and I stayed in the business and kept working,” Sharpe said.

He first incorporated Chuck’s Construction in 1982. His main focus during the early years was in the commercial/residential contracting sector. In the early 1990s, a series of storms resulted in significant damage to the surrounding electrical infrastructure, and he was asked to assist with the restoration efforts.

“From that point on I’ve just been trying to make a living,” he said. “We just kept growing, kept getting into different things until we got in with the power company and that turned into more consistent work year-round.”

Chuck continued assisting the electric utility construction crews year after year to provide heavy equipment services in the rugged terrain of the Appalachian Mountains.  In 2000 Chuck was presented with the opportunity to become a business partner with Louisville, Gas & Electric & Kentucky Utilities.

“We changed from Chuck’s Construction to Chu-Con at that point, which is just short for Chuck’s Construction. We stayed with that until last fall and we just felt like this name (MidSouth Power) better describes the work we were doing. At first we were mainly doing residential and commercial construction, but when we got into more of the power company work we felt like this name would give us a little better shot at some work.”

The name change was formally accepted by the Kentucky Secretary of State in November. They note that there is no change in ownership, corporate structure or any services that are offered. The change was made to better reflect the company goals as it transitions into other markets.

Chuck’s son Chris Sharpe serves as the COO and executive secretary for the company. He shared a specific story about changing the name to MidSouth Power Services.

“What really brought that about is we were in a meeting for a pre-bid or something with East Kentucky Power. One of the supervisors there said, ‘I didn’t know you all did powerline work and substation work, I thought you all just did concrete.’ They thought that’s what the Con was in Chu-Con,” Chris Sharpe said. “That’s when we decided we needed to make an adjustment here. We’re not getting invited to some things because they don’t know what we do.”

Chris said they tried every way in the world to incorporate Midway into the name because of their location in Middlesboro, midway between Lexington and Knoxville.

“Everything we looked at was already taken so we went with MidSouth Power,” he said.

The company has grown to have 100 employees. Another of Chuck’s sons, Jon serves as vice president.

MidSouth operates mostly in Kentucky and nearby Tennessee but has also been called to help with restoration efforts after storms in Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

“We’ve got storm brokers that call us when they’re going to have storms and think they might need some help,” Chuck said. “We went to Florida for three weeks and worked after Helene and Milton, those two hurricanes. We had crews working there at that point.”

He added that the last few times they’ve been called MidSouth has stayed home because this area was in as much need as anywhere else.

“We’ve got people here that we work for regularly. We work for KU all the time, we work for Powell Valley a lot, we work for Jellico Power a lot, so we let them know we’re available if they need storm help,” Chuck added. “So we didn’t want to take off and go somewhere else to work if they were needing help here. As long as we’ve got trouble here we feel like we need to stay here and help the people we work with all the time.”

The company started to transition away from residential and commercial building after the big slowdown in that sector in 2008 and by 2015 they were specializing in the power construction sector.

“We really don’t have the crews to do things like building houses anymore. When everything got so slow (with residential construction) in 2008, KU kept calling us wanting us to do more work so we kind of migrated toward them,” he said. “It’s good work and it’s constant. The construction is in and out, you’ll do really good one year and the next you won’t have anything to do.”

They joked that another nice thing about working with a big company like KU is when they turn a bill in they always get paid in full the next month.

“It’s not like in the old days of doing contracting when you’d give people a bill and they’d ask to pay half now and half later,” Chris said. “But we do have to travel to get it.”

Chuck said that company goes as far away as Paducah and regularly does work on substations along the Ohio River from Cincinnati to Louisville.

“We’re also working on one in Lexington right now and one in Georgetown. Plus we’re doing a lot of dozier work in the mountains for the line crews down here, that’s about half the work we do is equipment work to help get the line crews in and out of the place they need to get work on those power lines,” he said.

Chu-Con and now MidSouth also has a well-earned reputation for being a good neighbor to the community. They sponsor several civic events and contribute to school functions and athletic teams as much as they can.

“We either employ somebody’s dad, or brother or uncle, or we might have to go into somebody’s back yard or drive across their property somewhere,” Chris said. “I’ve got a son that goes to Bell County, we’ve got other parents here who have kids that go to Middlesboro and Pineville so we try to sponsor as many things as we can.”

“When they ask for something we try to help when we can,” Chuck said. “Like Chris said, sometimes we have to drive across somebody’s farm to get to a powerline somewhere and if they know us it’s a whole lot easier. We’ve been doing it for so long now just about everybody remembers us.”

Chuck said a good long-term business relationship he’s had with J.R. Hoe led him to help Bo Hoe in becoming a stage sponsor for the Levitt AMP Music Series in downtown Middlesboro.

Chris added that every now and then a crew will take one of the bucket trucks to a school and let the kids see how it works.

“Of course all the school kids want to go up in it, but we can’t do that. They’ll unfold it and go up and take a picture of the class from up high,” he said. “We buy them little yellow plastic hard hats and some little traffic vests and put a sticker on them. We try to get everybody involved.”

Chuck said his company built the Pizza Hut their office now sits behind and that last major commercial construction project the company did was for Home Federal Bank in Harrogate.

“I enjoyed that work and it was good meeting people and talking to people, made a lot of really good friends. It’s definitely been an experience,” he said. “But the money is so much better working with these power companies and you’re competing with different people. That’s all I really know to say about it.”

MidSouth Power Services provides the following solutions:

• Substation construction & maintenance
• Transmission access and exit strategies for construction/maintenance
• Heavy excavation, erosion sediment & control, reclamation
• Environmental remediation & spill prevention
• Tele-communication, construction & maintenance
• Underground primary/secondary construction & maintenance
• Overhead primary/secondary construction & maintenance

For more information visit their website: www.midsouthpower.net