Corbin wants his roofing crew working within an hour to an hour and a half of Loves Park. Then a customer three hours away reached out, and he agreed to do work for them.
“I’m going to look at a project three hours away. That’s not ideal. I don’t want to keep the guys out of town,” he says.
The radius exists for the crew. The exceptions exist for a certain kind of caller: one who has run out of other options and wants a solid contractor, not just anybody putting a roof on. For that customer, Corbin says, the limit gives way.
“I will bend my own rules and I will travel,” he says.
Roofing Systems is a union commercial roofing contractor working across Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. Corbin bought the company, already up and running, at the start of 2026. He had spent more than two decades on roofs by then, moving through a few different companies and learning at each, before he decided to buy one and run it himself.
The people he would be sending three hours from home are his own. They are W2 employees, and the company does its own work, with none of the roofing labor subbed out. The crew is union, and the company lists an affiliation with Roofers Local #11. Corbin says his guys have retirement plans and benefit packages.
He sees union commercial work as a way to stand apart in a trade where, as he puts it, “everybody with a truck and a ladder is a roofer.” For a building owner without connections in construction, he says, it is hard to tell who is who.
Most of the work is on low-slope commercial roofs. The company lists single-ply membranes, including EPDM, PVC and TPO, along with repairs, coatings and maintenance. One shop owner who had Corbin do a flat roof called him a “straight shooter” and described a crew that got in, finished the job and didn’t waste time.
The question of fit runs the other way, too. Corbin calls himself a poor salesman. If a roof needs only maintenance, he tells the owner that. If it needs nothing, that is fine with him. He has no interest in selling anyone something they don’t need, he says. A customer who wants a top-of-the-line system with a long warranty can have one. A customer who wants corners cut will not get that from him.
He accepts that his company will not be the right contractor for every customer.
He calls himself old school, someone who holds that your word should count for more than the money on any one job. He traces that to work ethic and to learning things the hard way.
“Money will come and go, but your reputation and your word, it’s harder to make that back than money,” he says.
That is how the three-hour job gets done. When the fit is right, he says, he will rent an Airbnb for the crew and cover the travel.
“We’ll do a job out of town if it’s the right fit.”