Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/426956
December 2014 | EquipmentWorld.com 54 contractor of the year | continued for stuff. That's not us. You can only take that for so long," Kevin Guyer says. "We were riding back and forth to work together and we came to the conclusion that if they can do it, surely we can make a go of it." Starting out The brothers say they began by trying their hand at bidding fi ve or six "trial run" jobs as practice. "We were just bidding and saw we were coming in fairly close to the other guys," Kevin Guyer says. "Then we had to get bonded and escrow ev- erything. Our bonding limits were $50,000 or $100,000 to start out with so we were limited as to what we could do due to manpower and equipment." To start, the brothers could only afford to buy one machine. "With the backhoe, you can get by and do pretty much anything with it, smaller stuff of course," Kevin Guyer says. "That machine was our backfi ll machine for years. We still have that backhoe. It's probably one of the toughest pieces of equipment we own." To complement the backhoe, they rented a skid steer, a single-axle dump truck and a 9-ton trailer. Six months and three jobs later they bought their fi rst excavator and hired their fi rst employee – their fa- ther. And for about six months, the three did all the work themselves. For the fi rst two years, the com- pany had only one crew and was limited on the work it could bid be- cause it was tough to tell just how quickly they would be available for the next job. "We'd always run into this thing where a job would go quicker than we thought it would and we'd have two weeks of down- time," Kevin Guyer says. The brothers credit their stepfa- ther Luke Earnst for helping them get the business off the ground. "He always said if we could make it past seven years, we'd be OK. So that was our fi rst goal," Kevin Guyer says. In those early years, the biggest challenge for the company was having enough cash on hand. "We were strapped," Kevin Guyer recalls. "Your checks didn't come to you, they went to escrow to keep the bonding company happy. To get the bonds they want to see you're making more money." "It was tough," Shawn Guyer adds. "We had to eat feathers, didn't we?", he says to his brother. "Our fi rst year we probably worked harder and for less money than we were at our old jobs." Early struggles aside, the com- pany never had an issue staying busy in its fi rst 10 years. And even with a slowdown in their market in the last few years, the company has managed to grow each year and now employs 23 workers and does a volume between $7 million and $8 million per year. "The market has slowed, but we haven't slowed down all that much. If anything our only snag has been permitting issues that engineers had," Kevin Guyer says. Frederick County, Maryland, coun- ty project manager Mark Williams calls the company "the best contrac- Kevin and Shawn Guyer, left and second to left, speak with employees at a roadside utility install. The broth- ers started their business out of a desire to lead a crew and treat their employees better than they had been treated by past employers.