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“My personality is such that I’m always trying to get to that next level.”  

These words were spoken by Chris Hunter, new owner of AMF Electrical Contractors in St. Louis, MO. It was spoken humbly and backed up by a career trajectory that exhibits hard work, a desire to learn, and an understanding that his individual success is a result of many good people around him. 

The First Jobs 

Chris’s path to the owner’s chair took a few twists and turns along the way. At first, he wasn’t even looking for a career in electrical. 

After high school, Chris went into the military. Stationed at Fort Drum, NY, he served four years as a forward observer with the 10^th Mountain Division, United States Army. While he had thoughts of getting into law enforcement after his service, plans changed. 

“I got married about a month before I got out of the military and, you know, usually employment takes precedence over everything at that point,” he says. “My brother, Cotton, was working for a small electrical contracting company, and he got me on with them. The company did new subdivision homes — maybe 400 or 500 homes a year. I did that for about three years.” 

Then the desire to learn something new and move to that next level hit, and Chris landed a spot at AMF in February of 2000. 

“They put me in a service truck right away,” he recalls. “It was very different as I went from wiring new homes to being in the city of St. Louis with lots of old homes and learning the ropes of the remodeling part of the industry.” 

Chris worked his way through that, got the itch to learn and do something different, and approached his service manager at the time to indicate he desired a change. The manager, wanting to hold onto Chris, transferred him to the commercial side of AMF.  

“My career pretty much took off from there and as I worked my way up, I was grateful for the former owners who pretty much gave everybody the opportunity to either sink or swim,” he says. “There was a point where I was looking to leave as I had another opportunity which would move me into the office where I could learn to estimate and manage projects. I approached the owners and they said, ‘wait a minute. We’ve got a spot for you here in the office.’” 

Chris took the change within AMF, and did learn how to estimate and manage projects. He learned so much from the other guys in the office that he moved from estimating and project management into operations, where he spent about six years learning that side of the business. 

“I got to learn what makes everything tick — how the money comes in and the money goes out, how the accounting systems works, and much more,” Chris reports. “This past October one of the owners passed away and the other owner needed to think about possibly exiting the business. I’m always looking to get to that next step, right? At the operations level, there’s only one more place you can go and that’s ownership.” 

Chris and a business partner bought the company in January 2026; Chris has 51 percent ownership. 

Moving Forward at AMF 

AMF offers full service electrical work across the board but Chris says its bread and butter is the commercial and industrial worlds, along with a small residential division.  

“Lately we’ve been doing a lot of work in the dental world; it’s crazy how many dentists there are out there,” Chris jokes. “We do a lot of work in office buildings, strip malls, car dealerships, parking lots, just about anything. If somebody wants me to dig a hole and fill it back in, I’ll do it. We have about 65 employees at this point, and I’ve set a hefty goal of doubling our sales in the next five years.” 

Chris feels this is attainable, given the excellent team at AMF. Even prior to taking ownership at the beginning of the year, Chris was instituting changes and communicating regularly to make sure AMF employees know they are the key to the company’s success.   

“For the last three to five years, I’ve worked really, really hard to change our culture to being one that is employee focused,” he says. “When employees are happy, they’re going to produce and then everybody’s happy at that point. We want AMF to be a place where people want to work.” 

Some of the moves he’s made include restoring the 401K match, which is vested 100 percent from the beginning; increasing PTO maximum to four weeks; paying 80 percent healthcare benefits for the employee and the family; and paying overtime for Saturday and Sunday whether you’ve worked 40 hours during the week or not.

“While most blue-collar guys don’t really share feelings, I ask questions so we know what these benefits mean to them,” Chris states. “I do reviews with apprentices every six months and everyone else once a year and I ask them specific questions like ‘how are we doing in the office?’ and ‘how are we doing helping you?’ ‘What things can we do better?’ The older guys are brutally honest, and the younger guys you kind of have to read between the lines with them.” 

Chris says he makes it clear to all AMF employees that he believes family comes first and that the company will do all it can to be flexible if they’ve got a doctor appointment or wish to attend a child’s play or sporting event.

“You need to get to those,” he says. “Family is very important and you only get one chance at it.” 

He acknowledges it can be challenging managing numerous personalities, family situations, and career concerns.  

“It’s tough to watch people struggle but it’s rewarding to be able to support them a bit as they go through things,” he remarks. “People used to always say to me that when you ‘get into the office, you get a lobotomy and you lose your spine.’ That’s something I’ve tried not to do. I always try to remember what it was like as a young married father working hard and trying to make those pennies stretch.” 

Powered by People 

Interacting with people is one of the parts of the business Chris enjoys the most. A new venture for him in his quest for ongoing learning is joining an IEC Forum Group; he attended his first meeting of the group this past spring in Phoenix. 

“There were about four or five other companies there ranging in sales of a few million dollars to almost a billion dollars,” Chris says. “I was able to meet with them, find out how they do things, see how they’ve met the challenges of the business, and pick their brains. I look forward to more of these meetings in the future sharing experiences.”  

Chris is active in the IEC Heartland chapter (formerly IEC of Greater St. Louis), and currently serves as vice president of membership on the Board of Directors. He helps review membership applications to then present to the full Board. He credits IEC Heartland Executive Director Kelly Hewitt with making things easy for directors to be involved with the chapter. 

“Kelly takes a lot of pressure off of us; she’s a fantastic chapter executive director,” Chris says. “With her leadership, we’ve grown our chapter apprenticeship numbers from about 75 to more than 300 this year. She’s very good at that.” 

Chris has seen a shift in high school students realizing that college is not the only way to move forward after high school. He says students and parents are beginning to understand that attending technical school or enrolling in an apprenticeship program through IEC or elsewhere is an acceptable step and a way to make a great living. Like many in IEC, he believes the challenge now lies in contractors working together to find ways to handle and train the number of apprentices coming in. 

AMF currently has 17 employees in the various years of the IEC Apprenticeship Program. In addition to finding potential apprentices through IEC, career websites, and local schools, Chris says AMF also looks to a government program helping veterans enter their next career after leaving the military. This program presents companies like AMF with potential long-term employees. They place service men and women with contractors about three months before their discharge and continue to pay them so the contractor does not have to. 

“When their time in the military is done, we pick up and take over paying the salary,” Chris notes. “These vets bring in qualities stressed in the military and appreciated by contractors — like punctuality and proper attitude. These are things that the military hammers into you. To date, we’ve only had three come to us through this program but we never have to worry about them being late!” 

The Brothers Hunter 

A unique part of Chris’s story relates to his family. In a family of six children, four are electricians who own electrical contracting companies. Over the course of their electrical careers, each of the brothers also has spent some time at AMF. Only his older brother Charlie and younger sister Caryn did not make electrical their career. 

Chris is the oldest brother in electrical. Next is Cotton (who initially got Chris into the field); Cotton owns Down to the Wire in St. Peters, MO. Next is Colby who owns Hunter Service Group in San Antonio, TX. Then it’s Caleb who owns Extreme Electrical Contractors, also based in St. Peters, MO. 

“We got our construction knowledge and mechanical ability from our dad who has been a carpenter all his life,” Chris says. “We were forced to help him and often heard ‘we’re going to go hang drywall this weekend.’ As I was growing up, he also was known to say — ‘why would I buy a dishwasher? I have six children.’” 

With four Hunter-owned electrical companies — three in the same geographic area — you might think there could be some conflict over competition for customers. 

“It’s more often that we help each other rather than compete,” Chris acknowledges. “Cotton is pretty much a residential contractor and does a little bit of commercial. Caleb does a lot of residential and about 20 percent commercial, and I’m more commercial and industrial. We don’t really compete against each other very often. There is enough work out there for everybody. There is a lot of talk about work when we’re together at holidays though; it gets loud as we’re all used to being in charge of everything and try to talk over each other.” 

Will the Hunter electrical legacy built by Chris, Cotton, Colby, and Caleb continue? It’s likely. Chris has four children — one of his sons currently works at AMF as does his oldest daughter’s husband. 

In a fast-paced electrical industry, Chris Hunter has learned well that business is best when proper training is offered, employee needs are a priority, great work is the standard, and you face each and every day ready to learn something new.