Mahaffey Fabric Structures, a privately owned company, recently celebrated over eighty successful years serving national and international clients. Our history is interesting and we are extremely proud of it!

Way back in 1924, brothers Owen, Gene and Earl Mahaffey started out making canvas tarpaulins, awnings and cotton pick sacks. When a request came in 1929 to make a tent, they obliged, only to have their client fail to pick it up. It remained unused until they received a call from the Tri-State Fair (now known as the Mid-South Fair). That call resulted in their first tent rental and the next phase of the business was formed.

In World War II, tent rentals were forgotten as the army contracted the job of making hospital ward tents and ammunition bags to Mahaffey. They shipped a boxcar of tents each week. That remained the sole job of the company for the duration of the war.

In 1972, William F. Pretsch purchased the company from the Mahaffey family when the owner Eldred 'Red' Mahaffey died in a private airplane accident. Pretsch immediately saw the benefits of the new clear span structures he had seen in Europe and was the first to introduce them to the American market in 1982. Their popularity was immediate and the company made the natural segue from tents to the large clear span structures that we are well known for today.

Clearly established as leaders in the market, Mahaffey enjoyed tackling customer "problems" with revolutionary ideas. For example, when the movie Bagger Vance was being filmed in South Carolina, the production company called Mahaffey for semi-permanent structures to serve as the stars' dressing rooms. The problems with traditional fabric walls were security issues, humid weather and too many bugs; Mahaffey designed special "hard" walls for the structures that solved those issues. Today, our competitors are flattering us by mimicking the hard wall approach.

Today Mahaffey serves customers throughout North America and the Caribbean, installing as many as 400 + fabric structures in a typical year. When size is a factor, Mahaffey offers the largest rental structure in North America, 164' wide X 300' long, or large enough to cover a football field. Recently Mahaffey provided temporary facilities in Arkansas for the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library. This project included seating for 18,000. Mahaffey also set up housing facilities in the Cayman Islands for those who lost their homes to Hurricane Ivan. Twenty-five hundred soldiers training for Operation Iraqi Freedom at Fort Polk, LA, have been using similar housing. We'd be happy to learn more about your needs - call us today.