Three generations of the Lines family have roofed and insulated homes and businesses in Yuma, Arizona since 1945. Our story starts with a Greyhound bus, a phone call and the fact that for most of the early 1940s, Yuma did not have a single roofing company of its own.
Reviewed by Michael Lines, General Manager, Lines and Lundgreen Roofing and Insulation.
What is now Lines and Lundgreen started out in the late 1930s as Butler Construction, founded by John “Johnny” Butler. Butler built homes and commercial buildings in a Yuma that, in the years before and just after World War II, was still a small desert town. Construction was picking up, but one piece of the local building trade was conspicuously missing: roofing.
In the mid-1940s, there was not a single roofing company based in Yuma. Any homeowner or builder who needed a roof put on a new house had to call out to Phoenix or San Diego and wait for a roofing crew to drive in, and those crews would not make the trip for one house. They waited until several homes were under construction before hauling their equipment across the desert. Projects sat, sometimes for months, waiting for a roof.
For Johnny Butler, this was a problem he could see from the other side. His own construction jobs stalled because the roofers had not arrived. He was, by all family accounts, done waiting.
In 1945, Wilton Lines was honorably discharged from the United States Navy, where he had served as a Petty Officer 2nd Class. Out of the service and looking for work, he made his way to Phoenix.
Not long after he arrived, the phone rang. On the other end was Johnny Butler, his brother-in-law, with a job offer. Butler needed a good worker on his crew in Yuma. He offered $1.25 an hour and asked when Wilton could start.
Wilton boarded the Greyhound the same night, rode it across the desert into Yuma, and started working with Johnny the next morning. That bus ride is the moment the Lines family entered the Yuma roofing business, though neither man knew it at the time, because there still was not a Yuma roofing business yet.
Not long after Wilton arrived, Johnny Butler decided to solve the roofing problem himself. He left Yuma, went out and bought a tar kettle, and brought it back. With that one piece of equipment, Yuma had its first local roofing crew.
Insulation followed quickly. If the company was going to put on roofs, it might as well handle the insulation underneath them too. The firm was renamed Butler Roofing and Insulation, and the combination of roofing and insulation work under one roof, literally, has stayed with the company ever since. Three generations later, we still hold an Arizona Registrar of Contractors license for each trade:
Wilton worked alongside Johnny as his foreman for the next 25 years, running crews on Yuma rooftops through the post-war building boom and the years in which air-conditioned homes turned insulation from a luxury into a necessity in 115°F Yuma summers.
When Johnny Butler decided to retire after a quarter-century of roofing in Yuma, Wilton Lines was the obvious person to take over. Wilton bought out Butler’s stock and all of the company’s equipment, including the tar kettle, the trucks and the tools, and changed the name to Lines Roofing and Insulation.
For the next decade, Wilton ran the company the way Johnny had taught him: small crews, Yuma homes and businesses, no job too small to be worth doing carefully. He stayed hands-on, and he kept the shop close enough to home that the next generation of his family grew up walking around it.
In 1981, Wilton’s son John Lines and son-in-law Steve Lundgreen took out loans and bought the company from Wilton. They changed the name to Lines and Lundgreen Roofing and Insulation, which is still on our trucks today.
Under John and Steve, the company grew beyond hot-asphalt built-up roofing into the full range of systems that modern Yuma properties need: clay and concrete tile, asphalt shingles and cedar shake, standing-seam and galvalume metal, TPO, EPDM, modified bitumen, and restoration coatings. On the insulation side, they added spray foam which, in Yuma’s climate, does more to cut cooling bills than almost any other upgrade a homeowner can make.
John and Steve ran Lines and Lundgreen for the next several decades, through economic cycles, changes in building codes, and the steady expansion of Yuma County out into Fortuna Foothills, San Luis, Somerton, Wellton and Gadsden. Under their leadership the company grew its commercial roofing division, with projects that have ranged from small local businesses to federal work for clients like NAVFAC.
Lines and Lundgreen is run today by the third generation of the Lines family. Jonathan Lines and Rosalie Lines are the current owners. Jonathan’s brother, Michael Lines, serves as General Manager and oversees our day-to-day operations.
John Lines and Steve Lundgreen have stepped back from day-to-day ownership, but they have not gone far. Both remain available to help whenever a project or a customer needs their experience.
The crews that actually climb onto the roofs today include longtime employees who have been with Lines and Lundgreen for decades, working alongside the newer hires they have trained. Many of them are bilingual, which is how we have come to describe ourselves simply: Se Habla Español, in the office and on the job.
Wilton Lines: joined in 1945, foreman for 25 years, bought the company from Johnny Butler and renamed it Lines Roofing and Insulation.
John Lines and Steve Lundgreen: bought the company in 1981, renamed it Lines and Lundgreen, grew it into a full-service roofing and insulation contractor.
Jonathan Lines, Rosalie Lines (owners) and Michael Lines (General Manager) run the company today.
80 years in one town leaves a long paper trail. Lines and Lundgreen is licensed, bonded and insured in the state of Arizona, and we carry three separate Arizona Registrar of Contractors licenses, including a residential roofing license, a commercial roofing license, and an insulation license, so that every trade on a typical Lines and Lundgreen project is covered by our own credentials, not a subcontractor’s.
We are active members of the Arizona Roofing Contractors Association and the National Roofing Contractors Association, and have long-standing relationships with the manufacturers whose products we install, including Johns Manville, Tamko Building Products, GAF, CertainTeed, Malarkey Roofing Products, Owens Corning, Armstrong Ceiling and Wall Solutions, USG, and Eagle Roofing Products.
Closer to home, we have been a part of the Yuma community for decades: Yuma County Chamber of Commerce, Caballeros de Yuma, Rotary Club of Yuma, Yuma Southwest Contractors Association, and the Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation. Check out the full list on our affiliations page.
Most of the roofs we work on today did not exist when Wilton Lines got off that Greyhound bus. But the way the company approaches them has not changed much. We still work primarily in Yuma and the surrounding communities. We still handle roofing and insulation together, because one affects the other. And the family name on the trucks is still, three generations later, the family answering the phone.
Call us, email us, or send a note when you are ready for an estimate. Office hours are Monday–Friday, 8 AM – 4 PM. After-hours messages are returned first thing the next business day.
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