Greenwood businessman Roosevelt “Bo” Roach knows firsthand the value of hard work.
“I’ve been a working man all of my life,” said Roach, 72, the owner of Bo’s Bar-B-Q, located at 507 Carrollton Ave.
He is also the owner of Roach Transportation Service, a private charter bus operation.
Roach credits the late Louis McCaskill with teaching him the art of barbecuing.
“He was a good barbecue man,” Roach said of his friend.
At first, Roach cooked for the public only periodically. The reception, however, became so good that after one robust Fourth of July, he decided to go into the restaurant business full bore.
“So many people were asking for barbecue that put a thought in my head. I told them I would open at the first of the year,” he said.
In 1989, Roach opened his initial location in a place located on Main Street near the historic overpass. Roach said he had two grills specially made to handle the cooking load. The restaurant relocated to Carrollton Avenue in 1999.
Roach Transportation Service was born out of necessity, he said.
He was laid off in 1997 from Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. after more than 33 years of service with the manufacturer. The company closed its Greenwood plant a few years later.
Using his personal car and a van, Roach began ferrying Medicaid patients to and from doctor’s appointments. Later, working with a program at Mississippi Valley State University, he began transporting welfare recipients, still in his personal vehicles, to potential employers in a welfare-to-work program.
A few years later, Roach Transportation expanded.
“I first bought me a transportation bus. I used it cross-country, taking people to reunions and stuff like that,” Roach said. Destinations included Washington, D.C., Orlando, Florida, Texas and Chicago — “you name it,” he said.
That kept him busy on weekdays. On weekends, he sold barbecue.
In 2014, Roach gave up “long hauling.”
For Roach, work began when he was a child growing up on Racetrack Plantation outside Greenwood.
“I was out in the field, picking cotton ... chopping cotton,” he said.
One day, when Roach was 14 or 15, R.E. McCool, the “boss man” of the plantation, allowed him the privilege of driving a pickup truck on the place, Roach said.
He was given the responsibility of hauling cotton choppers to various fields throughout the day. This was back in the day when grass and weeds were removed from the rows of cotton plants largely by black men and women using hoes. Roach’s pickup was equipped with “hoe filers” on each side to sharpen any dull hoes so that workers could stay in the field. He even was in charge of a water boy who stayed with the truck, he said.
Roach has some advice for those eager to start their own restaurant.
“Right now, if I was going to go into the restaurant business, I’d just about have to buy my building first. Your overhead is so high,” he said.
If an operator is renting a building, the overhead, including utilities, will run currently between $2,000 and $2,500 per month, according to Roach.
That’s why “you’ve got to have a business that’s booming. Don’t go in there empty-handed,” he said.
•Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
