Evelyn and R.G. both believed that the growing sales and profits of the company were blessings from the Lord. Between 1930 and 1940 annual profits grew from $34,795 to $1,858,229.

The Company’s growth was stimulated by the outbreak of World War II in Europe and the subsequent expansion of military facilities at home and abroad. The development of the Tournapull/Carryall, the dozer blade, and the sheepsfoot roller placed R.G. LeTourneau, Inc. on the forefront of the earthmoving industry just prior to the beginning of World War II. In fact, the Company was the largest producer of earthmoving equipment prior to and during the war, supplying seventy percent of the dozer blades, scrapers, Tournapulls, and rooter plows used by military engineers. The Company also produced the specialized equipment attached to caterpillar tractors, and supplied Army engineers with eight thousand scrapers and fourteen thousand dozer blades. World War II was an engineers’ war, and one of the reasons the Allies won the war so quickly was their advantage over the Axis powers in airfield construction equipment, most of which was designed and built by R.G. LeTourneau, Inc.

Company sales jumped from $10.7 million in 1940 to $42.2 million during 1944, the last full year of the war. Because R.G. wanted to carefully follow government profit guidelines, and also did not want to personally profit from the war while others were sacrificing so much, he kept his profit margin down during the war. In 1944, company profits were only $2.2 million or 5.1% of gross sales. Prewar profits were typically 20% or more of gross sales.

Shortly before the beginning of World War II, R.G. built a second plant in Toccoa, Georgia. He was impressed with Toccoa Bible Institute’s president, Dr. Robert A. Forrest, and wanted to help provide work for the Institute’s students.

R.G.’s plant opened in 1940, and when he found few skilled workers in northern Georgia, he started a machinist school similar to the one he had in his Peoria plant. The Toccoa school would be more extensive, offering courses in metallurgy, heat treating, English, and communicating in addition to the basics he had established in Peoria, which provided blueprint reading, mathematics, and machine operation. A master machinist supervised the students in the plant, and three or four other men taught the classes, which met three hours each day.

Dan Malone was typical of the students who attended Toccoa plant school. He was nineteen when he heard about the school being opened one hundred miles from his home. He sold his automobile and was in Toccoa on January 18, 1941, when the two-ear course began. There he met seventy-four other eager young men at the brand new manufacturing plant and conference center built on the hills of northeastern Georgia. In addition to the manufacturing plant with its own airstrip, the facilities included Lake Louise and the Louise Hotel, both named after LeTourneau’s only daughter. The hotel was on one side of the lake and the plant on the other.

The men were divided into three shifts of twenty-five men each. For the first eight months, the men stayed in the hotel and used a barge to get back and forth to the plant each day, but they eventually were moved into a new dormitory built near the plant.

R.G. and Evelyn saw to it that the spiritual lives of the young men also received attention. The plant had a chaplain, and the workers were all allowed to attend regular chapel services. Evelyn, who became "Mom" to all of the "boys," bought a new Mercury station wagon for them to use for personal needs and for attending church.