Local traffic control company P.D. Brooks acquired by Nova Scotia firm

Outside the P.D. Brooks headquarters in Mechanicsville. Photos courtesy Frank Payne

A Mechanicsville-based traffic control firm is on the road to continued growth by way of an acquisition.  

P.D. Brooks, which provides traffic cones, barrels and road signs throughout the city of Richmond and Henrico County, was purchased by Nova Scotia-based Right Traffic.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The sale closed March 3, after P.D. Brooks went to market in search of a buyer last November. 

P.D. Brooks President Frank Payne said the company is retaining all of its nearly 60 employees, whose duties include helping with traffic control for Richmond parades and all Sports Backers’ events, such as the annual Richmond marathon and Monument Avenue 10K. 

The company also has VDOT-certified technicians and flaggers for traffic control and sales, rents and repairs on-road equipment like message boards and crash cushions. 

Payne said becoming part of a larger company like Right Traffic gives P.D. Brooks the chance to grow its headcount to keep up with demand. He said P.D. Brooks hopes to increase the number of its employees by at least 25% this year. The company is currently hiring, planning to increase both its management and traffic technician forces. 

“We want to get aggressive. I turn away too much business because I don’t have the people to do it. …These are good problems to have, and now we hopefully have the resources to do this,” Payne said.  

Joining Right Traffic will also help P.D. Brooks better manage the government regulation that comes with such growth, Payne said. 

P.D. Brooks will retain its four office locations under the new ownership.

“We were getting bigger, and when you get bigger, there’s more government regulations you have to abide by,” he said. “For example, we didn’t have a human resource department. So having someone purchase us allows us to be more regulatory.” 

P.D. Brooks will retain its name as part of the deal, a point that was a top priority for the company, Payne said. 

“They provide an avenue for us to do this, and to keep the name. That was the biggest thing. We want to keep the P.D. Brooks name, because the name has been out there since 1962,” he said. 

P.D. Brooks was founded six decades ago by P.D. Brooks Sr. and was eventually passed down to former President Sarah Brooks, who co-owned the business with Payne.  

Sarah Brooks, who had been with the company since the 1980s, retired recently, and Payne, who formerly served as vice president, took on the president role right around the time of the acquisition closed. 

Right Traffic, which was formed in 2020 out of Canadian private investment firm Genix Holdings, provides many of the same services as P.D. Brooks, including equipment rentals and maintenance and traffic control services. The company operates in 15 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces and has around 2,500 employees. 

This is not Right Traffic’s first entrée into Virginia; the company has five Virginia offices outside of the recent acquisition, including one in Richmond at 1001 E. Fourth St., according to the company’s website. Right Traffic acquired the East Fourth Street location following its acquisition of Pennsylvania-based W.D. Wright last year. 

P.D. Brooks has four locations: its Mechanicsville headquarters, and offices in Fredericksburg, Waynesboro and Virginia Beach, all of which will be retained. 

Payne noted a trend of consolidation within the traffic control services sector over the past couple of years. He added that there was a lot of interest when P.D. Brooks put itself up for sale.

“A lot of the ‘mom and pops’ are being acquired by major private equity firms. That’s one of the reasons for (going to market); we wondered what the value was. The numbers and multiples we were seeing were pretty big,” he said. “I think that’s why so many people were interested in us.” 

Local investment banking company Marriott & Co. was P.D. Brooks’ financial adviser in the transaction. 

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