Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/692436
June 2016 | EquipmentWorld.com 84 the family business. "During summers obviously I came back and worked here, but I always had the intention when I went to school that this wasn't go- ing to be a fall back for me," Gorick explains. "I felt that I would have an opportunity to work somewhere to make it on my own." After graduating from Clarkson University, Gorick interviewed with several companies, as well as the Connecticut Department of Trans- portation. Four offers came, he says, even with the companies knowing he had a job at a family business waiting for him. He was waffling a bit on the decision, though. "I wasn't sold at that time if I was just going to come here or not. But I was determined that I was going to do it on my own, if I did. If I came here, it was going to be 'OK, you're hiring me here,' as opposed to me going to work for another firm." Changing leadership Gorick quickly set his mind to stay home and joined the company full- time after graduating. "There was no time off. I was going to come back and make sure that we moved ahead and do what we had to do," he says. "So at that point, I was going out and running machines during the day and com- ing back and doing bidding work at night, then taking care of phone calls at lunch." He was determined Gorick Con- struction was going to grow at that point, confident that the quality people and the resources the com- pany had would help him achieve that goal. He became president of the company just two years later. "We had to either get a little bit bigger, or we had to go smaller, but we couldn't stay where we were, because we were going to get pushed out," he says. "So we went after some bigger jobs." The first of these jobs was a $1 million-plus project on the nearby I-81/I-88 bridge connector involving moving more than 400,000 cubic yards of dirt for the embankments and ramps. "I was going to prove to my father that getting the bigger jobs made sense," he says. "He thought it was too much for us to take on at that time. But it worked out well, fortunately." Gorick attributes his drive for growth to his mother, who he de- scribes as being the administrative and business side of the company versus the "worker" that his father had always been. "Anything to deal with paying bills, taxes, unions, lawyers, that was all her," he says. "I never knew a man that worked harder than my father, but if it was just him with- out her, it would have still been a dozer, backhoe and a dump truck show, and that's it." contractor of the year | continued Multiple machines work simultaneously breaking down an office building and sorting the materials.