About Ryan King

Born into it

I was born in 1991 in the Union Valley community of Seymour, Tennessee. That’s the same year my dad, Brian King, decided to start his own roofing company, and it’s the same road where Brian King Roofing still sits today. My mom, Angie, was pregnant with me when he made that decision. As far as I know, I’m the only person who can say the family business and I are the same age.

Roofing in my family goes back further than my dad, though. On my mother’s side, my great-grandfather Jim Boling and his brother Bill ran a roofing company in South Knoxville. My grandfather, Jim Sands, started Jim Sands Roofing, and it is still going just a couple of miles down the road from ours. My uncle Keith and my cousin Hunter Sands run it today. That makes me a fourth-generation roofer. In our family you don’t exactly get into roofing. You get born into it.

How Dad started Brian King Roofing

After high school, Dad worked as a mechanic and did paint and body work for a Knoxville company that serviced big rig trucks. He was good at it. But he wanted to be his own boss, and in 1991, with a baby on the way, he left to start a roofing company. Mom handled the day-to-day operations and the books in those early years while Dad was on the roof. In those first years the crew was mostly family. Dad and my uncle Ronnie ran it, and the guys on the roof were largely their cousins and other relatives.

That is the foundation this company was built on: a husband and wife willing to bet on themselves, and a lot of long days. More than three decades later, Brian King Roofing is an Owens Corning Platinum Preferred Contractor serving all of East Tennessee, and it is still owned and run by the family that started it.

My path to the business

I grew up around job sites, trucks, and shingle bundles. Some of my earliest memories of roofing are running the magnet after a tear-off with my cousin Cody, seeing which of us could pick up the most nails, while Dad and Uncle Ronnie managed the crew. After high school I worked summers with the crews, mostly as a ground guy: cleaning up the tear-off, keeping the site straight, and stocking shingles on the roof.

I went to Maryville College and graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in history and a minor in business management. History taught me how to understand people and why things are the way they are. The business minor taught me how to keep the lights on. Both come in handy every day. After graduation I came to work for Dad full-time, and I have been here ever since.

What I do at Brian King Roofing

In 2024 I became Vice President and Co-Owner. Day to day, I run all of our residential operations: scheduling every job, managing our crews, and making sure the work on the roof matches the promise we made at the kitchen table. My wife, Brittany, is our chief financial officer. Between Dad, Brittany, and me, the company is still very much a family operation, and I am now preparing to lead it into its next chapter.

Brittany, Dad and me at the shop in Seymour.

Along the way I earned a Master Craftsman certification from CertainTeed, completed Versico’s multi-day authorized contractor training for commercial roofing systems, and finished the VELUX certified installer course.

How I lead

I am not a lead-from-the-front guy or a lead-from-the-back guy. I would rather be side by side with the people who work here. I don’t micromanage. What I do expect is that everyone treats this company like we are all one family, because to me that’s exactly what it is.

Almost everyone on our team was someone I knew before I ever hired them. Racing friends. People I had worked with at other jobs. Guys I trusted long before they put on a Brian King Roofing shirt. When you hire people you already trust, you don’t have to manage them. You just have to lead well and get out of their way.

What I believe

My faith comes first. My relationship with Jesus Christ shapes how I treat a customer, how I treat a crew, and how I handle it when something goes wrong on a job. I am not perfect at it, but it is the standard I measure myself against.

Brittany and I are members at Valley Grove Baptist Church in South Knoxville, and one of the most important things we do as parents is make sure our kids are in church and building their own relationship with the Lord. When I stepped back from full-time racing a few years ago, that was a big part of why. Family came first. Faith came first. The business came first. I have never regretted that decision.

Family

Brittany and I met in high school in 2005. We dated through high school and college and were married in 2014. We have two kids, Kinsley and Kamden, and they are the best part of every day. Kinsley is a sweet girl who loves crafting and cheerleading. Kamden is a rambunctious little boy who loves hunting and anything with wheels on it. They are both great travel companions on the trips, big and small, that Brittany and I take them on.

Community

Beyond church, I coach a Pigeon Forge Little League football team alongside Derek Sexton. Derek is one of my best friends and works with me at Brian King Roofing every day. His dad, Scott Sexton, was my racing mentor and taught me as much about how to carry myself off the track as on it. Coaching kids with Derek is one of the ways that story keeps going.

Through Brian King Roofing we also sponsor a lot of Little League teams and community charity events, including the Special Olympics golf tournament held every year.

Life outside work

Racing. I started racing dirt late models in 2009 at age 18 and have raced across the Southeast ever since, including qualifying for the World 100 at Eldora in 2021. I stepped back after 2023 to focus on family, faith, and the business, and had planned a limited return in 2026 before a fall on the job in July put me out for the season. The plan now is to be back in the seat in 2027. The whole story is on the Racing page and at ryanking30.com.

Travel. Traveling is one of Brittany’s and my favorite things to do together. So far we have visited 22 countries and 26 states, and we are not done.

The Smokies. When I am not on a roof or at a track, you will probably find me bear hunting or fly fishing in the Smoky Mountains.