talked to the boss today, he said it has been a cut throat winter and so far they dont have much for work. a companys outstanding reputation means nothing to the bottom dollar. we do reconstruct for city streets, sewers, water and storm systems. along with an electrical division for parking lot poles and what not. the chances of another bridge falling down to get some more work are pretty slim i think?

bottom line, no worky, no sleddy. kinda sucks being the state just added 6 billion to the system, but hardly a nickel is going for roads and citys. and then they are raising gas taxes as well, but that wont go to roads or citys either. there all bastard people.

ya is a big con to get more money for special little problem for the wellfare state. its dumb. soory man that sucks.

Sorry to say, welcome to the club. This country needs an enema!!!

By the way the roads are, I think you'll see things come through for you madcow. It looks to me like more job security is ahead, in your line of work. Best of luck for your boss to land some more bids.

I know of a couple small construction companys that are waiting for road resrictions to go off but have no work lined up.

Gotta be plenty of road work in Wisconsin to be done. The great winter we had really took a toll on the roads here. Can't ever remember the roads being this bad after a winter.

or you could move to chicago, where the road repair never ends!

Maybe they bid too high.

nah, financially the company sits real good, the owners are very good with money and this is the first company i have seen where several of the owners are in the field working right next to you!! the company does have a big fishing boat, its like 12 feet long and must weigh about 500 lbs with engine! heck one owner has a truck with 250k miles on it. he said hes not ready to trade a good truck off.

what is happening around here is you have a lot of huge companys that used to just do big jobs that are now bidding up all the little 2-3 day deals, then you have every tom dick and harry going to cat and can lease a couple peices of equipment, toss out a pile of bids at the lowest price allowed by state, they get the jobs, screw them up and in 5 years we get hired to fix it.

we have gotten a lot of work out of anoka and maple wood area based on relationship with the local cities and our reputation for getting it done on time and right.

I am sure something will break loose, just very frustrating to see the people making the decisions getting more money in there pocket while they screw us over.

I am close enough to duluth or wisconson if i had to i could try them locations.


rumor has it that the owners have enough in the bank to keep us on payroll for 1 season.

As a concrete construction business owner, it's the same here in NY. I have been really busy with the bids and have a full schedule into summer but you can't back off. Like your boss, there is nothing wrong with my 200,000 mile Ford and now isn't the time to drop $40k. I can't help but think if we weren't dumping trillions abroad, maybe we could maintain our infrastructure and our jobs.
Everything is going to be good, just not great. It IS an election year.
Jim

election year!! thank god we have jim oberstar!!!lol maybe he can get another 3 million to pave bike paths up in the iron range. that was money well spent!!

I hear they re-hired the same company to continue work on the wakota bridge project that they already fired for screwing up the first bridge. You may have 2 more to rebuild soon.

lol yeah, i want to beleive that things will let loose and we will be swamped. you have to take the good with the bad. you cant have 15 years of exploding business without a couple bad years.

If you come to Wisconsin, try Payne and Dolan, Oaks, Mann Bros. Amon Bros, Highway Pavers, or Kramer.


Don

sucks to be you sucka!

Wow, such an intelligent post.