Story of my business, starting from the trunk of my car

Aliate · 2017-06-16T02:33:38.000Z

So Ive always been a member of this forum and lurk around from time to time. A lot of people on here might want to start a business, especially in excavation but they might believe that the barrier to entry ($$$) is too high. Ive been meaning to share my story but Ive wanted to wait until I hit a good milestone to start. In later posts I will go into more details about my progression with more pictures. I worked for a large excavating company, about 300 employees for about a year, while living in seattle. I have be around some form of utility and excavating work my whole life, but did not have much hands on experience, aside from a natural ability for operating, and learning very quickly from my mistakes, which were many. I wanted to start a business because after my first child, I no longer wanted to work for someone else into the 7 to 8pm days while my wife was waiting for me at home, while being lucky to take home $1,000 in a week. If I was going to be working late, Id do it for myself and make the money accordingly. I grew tired of people telling me to stay off equipment if I didnt know what I was doing. Which was true, I really didnt have a clue while I was learning. So off I went, put in my two weeks notice, had about $5,000 saved up, a plate compactor and demo saw I bought used off of craigslist and my ford fusion that I would need to take the car seat out of so I could go do a job. I go a phone from sprint that had unlimited minutes for about $35/month with their framily plan, a PO box to use as my mailing address and a registered agent to use as a physical address, which to this day I still use. I do not like to associate my home address with the biz. And I was off!! I had recently moved to Seattle a few years back so I knew basically no one, the only thing I knew from a previous business when I was younger was that property management companies had tons of small jobs, like concrete sidewalk panels, that would be perfect for me. So I started cold calling, 4,000mins a month, local property management companies, and kept track of who I called and how often I would call them back to hound them more. The first year was rough, I did $19k gross. Terrible. Anytime I got a job, I would either use my car, or go to U haul and rent a pick up truck to get done what I needed. I learned to fit a 8' form in my car and actually got quite a bit done that way. After property management companies picked up in the second year, I moved into digging in utilities for comcast, doing house burials. I saved money from that, which was a huge battle by itself, and started purchasing equipment. We now do commercial foundation backfills, excavating and utilities. We do very little residential work. As time goes on I will add to this thread, I hope some use it as motivation/inspiration to get started on their own. If you have the determination, nothing is impossible and this thread will be proof of that. This was taken in 2014, somewhere around June And this was just a few weeks ago (2017)

CM1995ExpertJan 28, 2024#42

Aliate said: We pushed out a few thousand yards of dirt in a day with those two machines. Two D3s couldn’t even keep up with the 71. I have a D3 also, it’s a great machine. Around here though you can’t always take an extra few days to get the dirt moved, you gotta beat the rain. An operator also costs about $95/hr. Click to expand... Just messing with ya. We don't do enough large dirt jobs to justify the cost. A D4 may be our next dozer. Just a little HP and weight for not much more money. Probably swap over the GPS equipment from our D3 and sell it for more than we paid for it. I do enjoy a mass ex job where you can move a couple thousand yards a day. Something about getting the rhythm of the hoe loading, the trucks making the rounds, dozer hitting the loads and achieving compaction tests all in orchestra.

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