New ownership, same Texas Traditions Roofing

Texas Traditions Roofing was started in August of 2014 by Mike Pickel and his brother-in-law Gary Emory. The award-winning roofing company does both residential and commercial work. In January, ownership shifted to Mr. Pickel’s son, Micheal, and Bryan Chisholm.

“This is a new adventure for me and Michael as new owners.” Mr. Chisholm said. “We have this opportunity to build upon what Gary and Mike set forth 10 years ago. We want to take it to the next level, they’re passing the torch on to us. We’re just so happy and blessed to keep the family going and keep serving the community.” 

When Mr. Emory and Mike Pickel started Texas Traditions Roofing, they set out to surpass the standards set by most roofing companies which are known to be untrustworthy and to take advantage of customers.  

“[Texas Traditions Roofing] wants to disrupt the roofing industry through integrity, trust, customer service and marketing.” Michael Pickel said, quoting the mission statement his dad came up with. 

After three years of working at the company, he bought the company with Mr. Chisholm, who was hired a year ago as vice president of construction and quickly climbed up the ladder. In order to carry out the company’s mission, the duo have continued to promote the company’s list of key values. 

“Our value is to focus on faith and taking care of the people that work for us,” Mr. Pickel said. “We want to make sure that we’re not in the business to help the business. We’re in the business to help people. We want to make sure that we’re taking care of our families and the families of those who work for us. 

“We want to be honest internally and be honest to our customers. We need to be humble, we need to remain humble and we need to be respectful all around. [...] We always want to exceed our customers' expectations and vastly exceed the expectations that we set for ourselves.” 

Lastly, their value is to keep up with the latest roofing technology to make sure that they do their job on an expert level. 

Texas Traditions Roofing is involved with nonprofits in the Georgetown Community including the Williamson County Advocacy Center, BiG, the Georgetown Youth Baseball Association, and Georgetown Youth Soccer Association. 

“At the end of the day, Georgetown is home,” Micheal said. “Georgetown is where we get to work— and we get to serve a lot of people in Georgetown both residential and commercially.” 

In 2023 Texas Traditions Roofing was voted Georgetown’s Best Roofer and they were also awarded a Certificate of Safety Achievement by Texas Mutual Insurance Company. According to Mr. Pickel, the company hasn’t reached this level of achievement without some unique adventures, which he shared. 

“This homeowner had a lot of trees around their house, which is pretty normal. They called us out because they had a leak. So we got there, and we had to get up into the attic to see if we could identify where the leak was. One of our roof advisors went up into the attic. When he came down the homeowner asked if he had seen anything in the attic. He said ‘no, I didn’t see anything.’ The customer then said ‘Oh well that’s good. I’ve had some really bad problems with snakes [from the trees]. We actually had a snake infestation.’ So whenever I get into an attic now, I’m thinking twice.”

He said jobs on the Square in Georgetown can also be interesting because of the historic nature of the buildings. Mr. Pickel explained that sometimes that means crawling around in some small, creepy attics. 

“I [have been] convinced that I was going to find… like a body from the 1800s or something,” he joked. “It’s really cool to see the historic stuff in Georgetown but you just never know what you’re going to find. It keeps us on our toes. When people shoot guns up into the air, it’s gotta come down somewhere. It’s not uncommon that you’ll walk on a roof and you’ll see that a bullet has been semi-embedded into the roofing membrane.” 

Texas Traditions Roofing is celebrating their 10 year anniversary in August. They hope to continue to serve Georgetown for years to come.