Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/201186
contractor of the year finalist | continued Rich Gordon oversees work on a Baystate Engineering jobsite. Engineering. For that first year he drove a dump truck for hire and looks back on that time as being as happy as he's ever been in his career. In 1993 his first big job came along with a subcontract in the construction of a movie theater. Gordon bought a used backhoe and just three months and a lot of sun-up-to-sun-down work later, and made a significant profit. Things moved pretty quickly after that. Gordon paid off his backhoe and his dump truck as well as a pickup he'd bought along the way. And after a job building a hotel that netted him another big profit, he bought a loader and an excavator. "So I started loading up and that just kept parlaying into more work," most of which was subcontract jobs with one or two general contractors, Gordon says. "I did realize that it was time to branch out and not put all of my eggs in one basket." Baystate grew quickly and within 10 years Gordon had more than 50 employees. But after a subcontracted building a local high school 56 November 2013 | EquipmentWorld.com went bad in 2004, Baystate took a big hit financially. Looking back, Gordon says he had gotten too big. "I was taking work for the sake of just taking it, to keep it all going," " I don't need a shrink, I need a day in the D8. " he says. "Nobody gave me a dime ever. I built this myself. I was a type-A workaholic. I was feeding the fire." After losing a large sum to the job after it went south, Gordon didn't declare bankruptcy or avoid those who he had done business with or owed money. Instead he reevaluated and downsized his business. He got rid of equipment he didn't need, restructured the company and put an emphasis on communication. "It's tempting to go after more work. But I think back to my biggest year in business when I did $12 million and made no money," he says. "So bigger isn't necessarily better. And having more guys means paying more hours. Without proper management it becomes difficult to continue growing." The formula worked well. He has half as many employees as he did at the company's peak workload, but through managing his company's size and keeping the load reasonable, he returned to profitability. "The biggest thing I learned during that entire experience was communication. I was on the phone every day," Gordon says. "I'd go to people's offices and work with them until I came out of it com-