Bill Wallace

President & CEO Big C Lumber

Last Reviewed: September 28, 2026

Executive Summary

Bill Wallace is President and CEO of Big C Lumber, a building materials supplier that traces its origins to a lumberyard opened in Westville, Indiana, in 1921. The business is still family-owned, now in its fifth generation, and operates 16 retail lumberyards across Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. It also has three manufacturing facilities that make structural building components, custom millwork and cabinets, and windows and doors. Wallace is a career lumber man rather than a family member. He entered the industry in 1984, spent twenty years with another company and joined Big C around 2001. He leads it alongside a board chaired by the owning family.

Career Highlights

• President and CEO of Big C Lumber, a fifth-generation family-owned building materials supplier.
• Oversees 16 retail lumberyards across Indiana, Michigan and Ohio and three manufacturing plants.
• Led the company through its centennial in 2021.
• Entered the building materials industry in 1984 and spent twenty years with one company before joining Big C.
• A regular speaker at Southwestern Michigan College’s Sawdust Day, recruiting students into the construction trades.

Professional Journey

Wallace graduated from Hartford High School in 1979. He has told students he was then “without a clue to what I wanted to do.” He found his way into building materials in 1984, at a time when, as he recalls it, interest rates of 18 percent had choked off home building for years and left a large housing shortage behind them. The person who interviewed him urged him to join the lumber business, work hard and grow with the industry. He stayed with that first company for twenty years.

He then moved to Big C Lumber. The company began in 1921 when William Hass and George Bales opened a lumberyard in Westville, Indiana, alongside one they already had in North Liberty. Hass moved to South Bend in 1928 and built Belleville Lumber there. After his death in 1956, control passed to his children and to his son-in-law William Foley. The business split into three in 1968, with the Foleys keeping the Big C yards, and Roger Foley took a controlling interest in 1982. Roger Foley is now chairman emeritus, and Bridget Brady and Nick Brady are co-chairmen, with Bridget Brady also serving as CFO.

As President and CEO, Wallace runs a regional operation that combines retail lumberyards with manufacturing. Big C’s plants make structural building components, custom millwork and cabinets, and windows and doors, and the company supplies both builders and remodelers. He led the company through its 100th anniversary in 2021.

Much of his public profile comes from recruiting. At Southwestern Michigan College’s Sawdust Day in 2021, he told more than 100 high school students that building trades opportunities were “10 times better” than when he had started. He pointed to years of underbuilding after the housing recession, strong demand from millennials forming households, and a labor shortage that had led Big C to “hire for attitude” rather than wait for qualified candidates. He returned in 2022 with former SMC students who had changed careers to join the company, making the case that a student could “start at the ground level, grow with a company” and build a career.

Education

No post-secondary education was found. He is a 1979 graduate of Hartford High School.