Goodmanson Construction – Golden 50 Year Anniversary

2021 is Goodmanson Construction’s 50th Year in Business, and We Didn’t Get Here on Our Own.

A mechanic working on an excavator.

We were founded by a Vietnam War Veteran who had been out of a job as a Ready Mix Concrete truck driver. It was a simple gig, and Merl Goodmanson had grown up doing that kind of work. Small jobs. A bit of sidewalk here and a front stoop there.

All you need for a business that small is sometimes just you and a truck and a strong back and a good sense of hustle. You do your jobs and then go out and try to drum up more business.

Somewhere along the line, business gets serious.

Mechanic working on a skid steer

People get to talking. They tell their friends about you. And their friends tell their neighbors and pretty soon your name is all over town. Your phone is ringing and jobs are coming in. You now have to hire employees if you want to get it all done. So you do.

First it’s just guys to help you on the job sites. Eventually, you’re making (and spending) so much money that the old cigar box doesn’t seem like a good system anymore. So you get an accountant.

It’s not long before the big commercial projects start coming in, bringing great opportunity, but great risks.

Eventually word gets around about the job you’ve been doing. All that hustle has started paying off. Now you’re spending less time on site and more time selling jobs.

Then a call comes in and it’s the biggest job you’ve had to date. You take it, of course. You do the job. Then they don’t pay you. They say they went bankrupt.

Your business nearly goes bankrupt too because not only do you have costs incurred but you still have to pay your guys who did the job.

Somehow, you pick yourself back up, get to the next job, keep doing your best and you survive. Lessons learned.

A great company isn’t just built by two hands, but by the hands and labor of many.

As a concrete, asphalt and excavation contractor you go through ups, downs, zig zags and everything in between. You build up resilience not just because you have to but because you know you’ve got a great team to support you. And you get bolder. You keep doing your best. You make mistakes but you learn from them.

And then you start doing things as a company you could never have imagined before. You work on projects that would have been unthinkable when you started.

While a great company sometimes starts with just one person, it becomes what it is meant to be because of the efforts of everyone that works there.

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