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- [00:00]
A
As you know, Ariat is the official Dirt Talk podcast sponsor. And at this point, we've talked plenty about their footwear, their workwear. But now it is winter, and boy, is it cold. It was 17 degrees this morning. I had to warm the truck up. But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest workwear possible. And Ariat has a long list of outerwear, amazing jackets, pants and other goods available now. You can shop at their website, ariat.comdirttalk that is ariat.comdirtttalk have you always been in this area?
- [00:56]
B
I was born and raised in Opelika in 1952, and I was away for 10 years. My father wouldn't let me go to Auburn. He said that's too close to home. I was a huge Auburn fan. I'm a huge Auburn fan. Today I have an Auburn wife and two Auburn daughters.
- [01:13]
A
Okay.
- [01:14]
B
One of them did work some at Georgia Tech, so I count that as dressing her in white and gold. That's closest I came to it. But. But, yeah, I've, I've grown up here. And so I did go to Georgia Tech when I could go to Auburn. And that was a. One of two the best advices my dad ever gave me.
- [01:35]
A
Why is that?
- [01:36]
B
Is because I was his, his, his. Actually, he said, you can't, you can't go here the first year, so you got to go away from home. He went to Georgia Tech. I wanted to build bridges. I wanted to be a civil engineer. And that was, you know, that was kind of a natural thing that would have. That's really the only other place I considered going. And I just. Now I have friends all over the world. I mean, there's a lot of guys now that are like me. A lot of them have retired, but they had very successful careers. And I credit a lot of my. Whatever success I've had, certainly to my education at Georgia Tech. But I don't know about all professions, but I know, at least in our industry, yes, I needed that civil engineering degree. But most of maybe, most, maybe the majority of my success is due, is due to my experience in the field, working every summer. My dad did not believe in going to Cancun. You worked on spring break, you worked on Christmas break. You went to a bridge. And I wanted to. I loved it. I loved it.
- [02:44]
A
So you grew up around bridge building?
- [02:46]
B
That's right.
- [02:47]
A
When did the company start?
- [02:48]
B
The company started in 1933. Four brothers born in between the world wars. Yes. Right in between they were all born in Conyers or Covington, Georgia, just east of Atlanta, 15, 20 miles. And the oldest brother, Fred Scott, married the rose Queen of Thomasville, Georgia. Thomas Thomasville, Georgia, may still be known as the rose capital of the world. And it was also that southeast Georgia, southwest Georgia area was a lot of plantations there. A lot of people from the north would come down there in the winter, as they did to Augusta. A lot of northerners, as we call them, would come down to the Augusta area, beautiful homes. And that's where they would winter before they go back up north. So really beautiful areas. They started the company there in 33. And so we're into that. Into it 92 years. I'm third generation. My daughters and Bill's sons are the fourth generation. And the fifth generation is here, not quite ready to go to work, but they're older every day being groomed for the exact. The bridge life, if that's what they want to do. It was three of our four brothers, my three siblings. Two of them joined me in the family business, and the other one, who we lovingly called the black sheep of the family, got into real estate and did better than all of us.
- [04:24]
A
Yeah, I believe it lives in Birmingham.
- [04:28]
B
So, no, we were never forced to do any of this.
- [04:33]
A
What about it drew you to it?
- [04:36]
B
I don't know that I ever really thought about doing anything else, because my granddad probably. It was probably very intentional on his part, but the impact on me was I looked forward as a child, and I really enjoyed. I. When I was real little, we'd get in the car and he'd always ride me down to the railroad track, a little dead end. And we'd park there and we'd watch the trains go by.
- [05:04]
A
There's nothing cooler.
- [05:05]
B
Yeah, it's so cool. And I was fascinated by that as a child. And then as I got a little older, I really looked forward to the summers. And when I say older, I mean, like 10, 11, I think might have been my first trip. And in the summers, at least two weeks out of the summer, I would go with him one week, maybe June, and one week before I went back to work, I went back to school, and we would. We. He always left because back then they didn't have. This is. This is in the 60, 61, 62. Didn't have all the communications now. So living in Opelika with work all around the Southeast, he would leave either Sunday night or Monday morning, hit the road and come back on Friday evening. That was a normal work week. And so in the summers, I got to go with him, and we enjoyed just great. I just remember having great times together every day. Every day we'd visit one or more bridge sites around the Southeast. At noon, we always stopped at a roadside motel so he could watch as the Turning World. As the World Turns. That was a generational thing there, that generation and my parents generation, that watching as the World Turns was like every. Everything stops. What.
- [06:19]
A
What is that?
- [06:20]
B
It's one of the soap operas. Oh, yeah. A long time. Long time running soap operas. It's no longer running now.
- [06:28]
A
Okay. I haven't.
- [06:29]
B
Yeah, no, I know your generation wouldn't. But that was. In. Mine didn't either, really, because we've kind of moved past that. But I grew up around that, so. But he had to watch that. You know, that was the thing. And then we're back in the car and. And. But the best part of the day, especially when I was younger, was he knew every fishing hole in the Southeast.
- [06:50]
A
Nice.
- [06:51]
B
And he. And he had a lot of friends everywhere. And we were always catching big bass and brim at the end of the day.
- [06:57]
A
Nice.
- [06:58]
B
And the bridge part of it just grew on me. But God made me that way. I'm a builder at heart. I love seeing a problem. I love figuring out how to fix it or how to build it. And I think that's something innate to any successful contractor.
- [07:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is. I think I. That's. I think that's. There's. There's something innate in. In most. Most of them. There's. There's certain people I've met that really are. They're just. This is what they're built for. They are. They just live and breathe. Whatever they do, whether it's concrete, it's dirt, it's steel, it's building bridges. And that, to me, when I see those people doing what they're doing, is the coolest thing in the world. I love it so much when I see that, like, Reed contracting. Mike Reed up the road in Alabama, Huntsville, that was another guy was just like. I have no doubt this is exactly what this guy was supposed to do. There's just no question. He's just cut from that cloth. And it's so much fun to see those people in action building stuff. I love it.
- [08:21]
B
Yeah. It's an adrenaline rush. It really is. Yeah. That's what you're kind of made for. And you've gotten. You've had the opportunity to get an education. Hopefully you took advantage of it. But, you know, when we're hiring, I'VE always been more interested in younger, whether right out of college or maybe a few years out. I've always been more interested in their. I wasn't looking for the straight A's, the geniuses, the 4.4s and all. All that. That's great. I was. I was a lot more interested in what they did with their spare time. You know, what, all that, what their activities were, what their hobbies were. And yeah, they had to be a decent student. They had to get a civil engineer degree. But, you know, what did they really enjoy doing? Because that's what it's. That drives the passion.
- [09:18]
A
Yeah.
- [09:18]
B
And if you don't love this. And I tell our folks all the time, especially people who've we interview in and when they come to workforce, you know, my goal is to help you find your career path. You think it's here, you think it's this type of work. I think it's my responsibility to help you in every way to see if this is it. But if it's not, I want to help you find what is.
- [09:44]
A
Yeah. Because it's. It's in their interest and your interest.
- [09:47]
B
Well, it is, yeah. But especially for them, there's no greater joy than in loving what you do.
- [09:55]
A
Sure.
- [09:55]
B
It's just. It's not work.
- [09:58]
A
I think it's no longer work, like civil engineering. The degree's hard enough, so anybody that finishes it. To me, I learned pretty early on, like, oh, I don't really need to worry about my GPA here. I just need to finish. And the only reason I worried about my GPA was to keep scholarships, but that was it. Like, as long as I keep my scholarships, I'm like, I don't think anybody's looking at this thing. And I could not wait to get out of classes so that I could get back into the field. I just. All I wanted to do was get back out and just be around people building stuff. And so school to me was, it was necessary. I. I had to do it, or at least I felt I had to do it. I don't think I had to do it. And it did teach me some things. But, yeah, I just looked forward to the day I could get back out into the field and work on the railroad or do blasting or go play pipe or whatever I was doing at the time. It was just. It was so much fun. And I hadn't done it until I was 18. I had never worked a day in my life until 18 years old because I just didn't grow up in that environment. I didn't grow up in a place where people worked, which is most of America nowadays. And so I legally couldn't get a working man's job, quote unquote, until I was 18.
- [11:19]
B
That's right. I couldn't come to work for the bridge company until I was 18.
- [11:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you were still around kind of working.
- [11:29]
B
Oh, no, definitely working. Yeah. No. One summer Daddy had us, there were me and my next youngest brother, who's just 13 months younger we were. Looked like. I think it was the summer of the ninth grade. And he kind of just made up something so we'd have something to do. He put us with a gentleman who had a mule and a wagon. And all we did all summer was pick up fieldstones out from under a power line, clearing so my daddy could plant something. I've forgotten what it was. Brown top millet or something, so he could shoot doves on it in the fall. But we were not going to sit around the house. We cleared fields, cleared rocks. And these. These were not dump wagons. He had to unload them, too.
- [12:18]
A
So. Same way out that they went.
- [12:20]
B
Yeah. And then another summer, he. He bought an old house, an old brick home, and they. I guess they used some equipment to break it down. I just remember spending that whole summer cleaning brick with the chip hammer, getting the.
- [12:36]
A
Getting the mortar off, hiding them up so that they could be reused.
- [12:39]
B
So we knew all about work. But you did have to be 18. So I started Georgia Tech in the summer of 70, but it was the summer of 71 before I could actually. I turned 18 in August at an August birthday. So I did work that first Christmas holiday and then spring break and then started full time at Lake Martin in Alabama on the Deep Lakes project.
- [13:06]
A
So did he want you to go to Georgia just to expand your worldview.
- [13:09]
B
To Georgia Tech now?
- [13:10]
A
Yeah, Georgia Tech.
- [13:11]
B
Yeah.
- [13:11]
A
Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, sure.
- [13:12]
B
Let's get that wrong.
- [13:13]
A
Yeah, I know. We're in the South. It's a big deal.
- [13:15]
B
He didn't tell me I had to go to Georgia Tech. He just told me that I couldn't go to Auburn my first year. No disparaging Auburn. He just wanted me away from home.
- [13:23]
A
Yeah. Just to.
- [13:24]
B
Yeah. He just get out and see the world. I need to get out and see the war.
- [13:27]
A
I see.
- [13:28]
B
Yeah. Now I don't remember. And I don't remember any of my friends. Well, I did have one who kind of explored the world for a year. I mean, he was working, but I never considered working on the ski slopes in Vail and then working In Hawaii, at a hotel, on the beach as a lifeguard. I never considered that work, but he had a great time. Other than that, most all of us back then, you went, you, you went straight on into college and pursued whatever profession you thought you wanted.
- [13:58]
A
To be sure. Yeah, I stayed maybe 15 minutes from where I was from for school, but then I would work away from home. Where was Phoenix? Arizona.
- [14:10]
B
Phoenix.
- [14:10]
A
Arizona State.
- [14:11]
B
Oh, Arizona State, yeah.
- [14:12]
A
Yeah. So it's right pretty close to downtown Phoenix. Scottsdale. But then I worked away in the summers away from home, which was I would say very character building. I didn't necessarily enjoy it, but it was really good for me to get away for a little bit. And then when I graduated college, that was my big thing was like I need to get away for a little bit. And now I go back to Phoenix. I went back to Phoenix, then moved to Nashville. I go back to Phoenix this time of year I'm like, what have I done? Why didn't I leave this place? This is just too good. 70 and sunny every single day. This is crazy. The first bridge project you worked on, you said it was a deep water project.
- [14:53]
B
That's right.
- [14:54]
A
What was that project like?
- [14:56]
B
So the company in the summer, I believe it was the summer of 70 or maybe in the winter. It was in 70. They won the contract for the. It's commonly known as the Collider bridge. It's Highway 69, 63 that crosses Lake Martin, which is only about 30, 40 minutes from here. That's a very large hydro lake built by Alabama Power. The dam was built back in the late 20s or 30s and then at one time it had more shoreline than any man made lake in the country. Wow, 700 miles or something. Actual three fingers of the lake. Beautiful lake. So it has now, you know, buying a lot on Lake Martin's like buying a lot at the beach, that popular place to live. And many people live there and commute here to Birmingham and other places. But the lake at that location where this crossing was, there was an old bridge there that was built before the lake was dammed up and it was way overdue to be replaced. But the water there was 125ft deep. Now back in those days in 1970, a lot of them were still done with caissons and some of the old types of construction. But our company had already done quite a bit of. We'd done a number of river bridges. We knew all about coffer dams still, sheep piling, coffer dams and go way back. And it was overlapped raw Three by twelves, you know, sheets. And those sheets would overlap. So the vertical sides of the Cofferdam were not 18 inch long or 24 inch long PC27s or those type of steel sheeting. The Z shapes, you call them Z sheets. It was wood, but by the time I came along, it was. They'd been using cofferdams, but nothing that deep. My granddad had hired an incredible engineer who went on to be president of the company, Jerry Swarthout. And that was. I credit my grandfather because he was getting older and this was 1963, I believe, 64. And Jerry out of Georgia Tech. He had actually worked for the company right out of school, then worked for the. For the Georgia Highway Department. Jerry then in 63. My dad, my granddad was a real visionary and he cared deeply about his grandsons. At that time he had three. Then Bill came along. But he restructured the company and wanted it. He wanted us to all have some shares of stock. But he did that just in case. When we got older and got out of school or as we were growing up, just in case we wanted to follow in his footsteps. There was never any pressure. Albeit he did take me around during the summers. That's what I'd say. I think. I think there was some intent for that, some ulterior motive. But I'm so thankful he did. And so that's kind of how that got started. And when I got out of school, I mean, when I got out of high school, I went straight to Georgia Tech. I had to work that first. I had to go to school the first year because I wasn't 18. But in those early months and then in the summer of 71, that's when I started full time at Lake Martin. So these coffer dams, that was the. There were 11 of them and they went 125ft of water. So as I've. I've said many times when I say my father started me at the bottom up, he really did. Because my first day of work was on the bottom of a pumped out coffer dam on top of the seal concrete. That's what enabled you to pump it out. So the sheets are all driven individually, first in a box form and then all the steel ringers are inside to keep it from collapsing when you do pump the water out. But you can't pump the water out unless you've got enough compost, concrete, underwater concrete poured in the bottom to create the. It's a boat. If you don't pour enough concrete, it floats. So you have to pour 40 to 42% of the vertical height of water to offset the buoyancy.
- [19:31]
A
Really?
- [19:31]
B
Yeah, it's really simple, you know, but yeah, it's. It's just big, big, big. Because these golfer dams were like 30 by 30.
- [19:39]
A
That's amazing.
- [19:40]
B
30 by 36. And they were. So you're.
- [19:43]
A
You basically like the cofferdam.
- [19:46]
B
You're.
- [19:46]
A
You're creating a dewatered.
- [19:49]
B
That's right.
- [19:50]
A
Portion of the lake to then build your foundation on the bridge on.
- [19:55]
B
Exactly.
- [19:55]
A
Without worrying about the water seal.
- [19:57]
B
Concrete necessarily has to be 40% of the height that you're going to pump out.
- [20:03]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [20:04]
B
That's all that. That's also structural.
- [20:07]
A
Sure. Because that's what.
- [20:08]
B
Yeah, because you don't pour it until you stand up a rebar cage all the way to the bottom. To the bottom of the excavation. So you dig out first and get down to hard rock. But you don't have to go into the rock as long as you've got enough penetration.
- [20:24]
A
But you're digging while there's still water there.
- [20:27]
B
Oh, yes, you're digging. But once you get it dug out and then you airlift, get all the fines, most of the fines, small things, you always suck up a few hard hats and stuff like that. This is 10 inch pipes. And you never know what's going to come out of there. And we have found a lot of interesting things because people through the years throw interesting things off the edge of the bridge. Oh.
- [20:50]
A
Because you're working alongside.
- [20:52]
B
Alongside another bridge. So, you know, we found a very number of different types of weapons.
- [20:58]
A
Oh, sure.
- [20:59]
B
Yeah.
- [20:59]
A
Yeah.
- [20:59]
B
That kind of thing.
- [21:00]
A
I always throw my weapons safes. Wow.
- [21:04]
B
And then a very famous story on a very similar lake is Lake Lanier in Atlanta. That's northeast. So that's the Lake Lanier is the pleasure lake of Georgia. It's very similar to the lake Martin in Alabama. Gainesville, Georgia, northeast, about an hour from Atlanta. And there we built two bridges parallel next to two existing bridges. And digging, digging pre digging first before setting the cofferdam, we came up with a car.
- [21:34]
A
Wow.
- [21:36]
B
And a little beknownst to us, we had solved the mystery, the mystery of the lady of the Lake. And right after they dammed up and filled up Lake Lanier for the first time, a couple years or less, somebody ran off the bridge. And it was a lady and a young girl. And they never found the vehicle because the water was so deep. And I think they eventually found the young girl's remains, but not until we grabbed that car with a clam Bucket. We came up with this old car and then it was full of mud and we washed it out. And there's the lady of the lake sitting behind the steering wheel, that is. And her silks of her undergarments were still intact and her jewelry. Yeah, that made headlines. It also about gave me a heart attack because my wife and I were. And girls were checking into a hotel in Atlanta right before Christmas. And I Turn on the 5:00 news and the headlines. I'm looking at me as soon as I turned it on. There's my superintendent talking to all the Atlanta media helicopters overhead. And I'm thinking I'm about threw up. I knew, I knew how many people got killed. How bad was this accident?
- [23:00]
A
Yeah, that's the only reason why construction's on the news.
- [23:03]
B
Typically it's the only time we ever get on the news. But it turned out, thank goodness, I said I had no idea. I had not heard anything then. No, I didn't know we didn't have cell phones.
- [23:15]
A
Yeah. There was no iPhones.
- [23:16]
B
I didn't get any text messages or anything. And so, gosh, you know, we could talk for days about interesting stories, you know, in construction. And any contractor can.
- [23:28]
A
Yeah.
- [23:28]
B
But bridges are unique and they've got a certain. I've never met anybody that wasn't interested especially. And how, how do you build a bridge across water?
- [23:40]
A
It is, it's something. Everybody's driven across a bridge over water. But I feel like most people can't answer the question how. It's. How do you build something in water? How do you do that?
- [23:51]
B
But they're all interested. Everybody's really, really interested.
- [23:55]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So you can. But you can pour the concrete into the water.
- [24:02]
B
It's poured through what's called a tremie pipe. So it's a solid pipe that goes all the way to the top above the water. But the trick is when you start, when you dump the first several buckets of concrete inside that pipe, you put. Basically, it's a very tight sponge. It's a tight sponge. At one point they use basketball. They figured out the sponges work better and you kind of soak them so that. So they're acting as a plug. And then when this weight, real quick weight of 3 yards of flowable concrete, that pressure, it literally plunges that, that plug all the way to the bottom of the pipe. The pipe is sitting right on the bottom or maybe up about 3 inches. The sponge comes out flat as a pancake. The concrete flows out and builds up a plume around the end of the pipe. And after you've put a couple of. So the concrete has to be around 7 to 8 inches. Slump that first batch. You don't want it too runny or you'll lose your prime.
- [25:13]
A
I see.
- [25:14]
B
The idea is that it surrounds the bottom of the pipe at the bottom of the excavation, and it leaves your pipe dry.
- [25:23]
A
Wow.
- [25:24]
B
And as long as you keep that pipe in the concrete, the wet concrete, you can keep pouring and pouring and pouring and pouring and the concrete spreads out to the edge of the sheet piling. And then it starts coming up. And so when the pipe is a real deep one, like 50, 60ft, like those were. If the pipe is usually you don't leave it too deep in the concrete, like maybe 5 to 10ft. And then you raise it up. But not out of the concrete.
- [25:55]
A
Yeah.
- [25:56]
B
Or you'd have to start over.
- [25:57]
A
Because you don't want. You don't want voids. No, that would create voids.
- [26:01]
B
That's right. And you don't. And you don't. If you've got. We're constantly checking these pipes with just a cloth tape and a weight on the end to make sure the pipe's dry.
- [26:11]
A
I see.
- [26:11]
B
There's always a little sludge right on top. But you can feel it. When a steel plate, you know, four by four half inch, you can feel it. When it hits the water, it immediately becomes lighter. So if you know, if you've got six inches or a foot of water, then you probably need. You got a leak or something, you got to consider what your options are. If you got five feet of water, you just have to stop, pull the pipe out and then re prime pretty quickly. So we're constantly checking that.
- [26:42]
A
Yeah. But you can't see any of this.
- [26:45]
B
No, you can't see any of it.
- [26:46]
A
You're completely blown.
- [26:46]
B
It's just a 10 inch pipe.
- [26:48]
A
Yes.
- [26:48]
B
Going all the way to the bottom.
- [26:49]
A
But as far as what you see, it's just water. That's With a pipe going into the water.
- [26:54]
B
That's right.
- [26:54]
A
Yeah. And you're trying to guess what the heck's going on at the bottom. And then you're. And as you're putting the concrete in, then you're pumping the water out of that. Of that area.
- [27:03]
B
We don't pump the cot. We don't pump any water out of the coffer dam until the pour is completed up to the elevation that I was telling you about. Offsets the buoyancy. And then we have to wait, you know, usually at least three days. By three days or Four days, five. Some states require seven days. But for that concrete ballast, if you will, for it to get its strength and then, but it doesn't have to be 4000 psi. 2000 psi is enough. And then you put your, not the same pipe but other 10 inch pumps, big pumps and you pump that water out. And because it's sheep piling the joints is ball and socket, ball and socket. You'll, you can drop some sawdust or you can drop something down along the, the seams of that and it, there's any gaps and there will be, it'll suck those in and kind of seal it. So it's never 100% dry, but it's close.
- [28:07]
A
Yeah. So you're constantly having to pump out water just a little bit.
- [28:12]
B
Just. There's always at least a small. Depending on how big.
- [28:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:19]
B
Because that's just natural. You're going to, you're going to get some water coming in, but it's not coming in around the sides. It's not coming, I mean around the edge of the concrete. You've got your, you've got your seal bottom and then you pump it out. Now in more recent years, and that's why all deep water coffer, that's the way all deep foundations were done. Well, river foundations were done. And there are still many applications where that still, still the best application more so today are drill shafts. Large drill shafts have taken the place of deep water foundations as I just described. So whereas we did the open coffer dams in 19. Let's see on Lake Lanier that was. We started in 89 and finished in 92. We had two bridges at two different locations. Fast forward to 2010 or so. Yeah. Around 2010, 11, we're on more lakes up there and we're on lakes over in north of Augusta, Georgia and certainly on the Tennessee river. And now we're doing drill shafts. So um, we, we still use subcontractors to do that because it's really kind of a specialty.
- [29:41]
A
Yeah. And the equipment's pretty expensive too.
- [29:44]
B
It's very expensive and it is a specialty. And it's one of those things you can't, you really can't afford to just do those every now and then because sometimes they don't go well despite the expertise of the people doing it. Just the conditions, geotech conditions and others, you lose tools, you look, I mean it's, it's just not a, there's no guarantee. So you need to be in that business. You need, you need to like in bridges, I always say you need to do you out of five, you got five jobs going on three of them or you're going to pay overhead and you know, maybe just kind of break even. One's going to be a dog, but one of them is going to be a real winner and hopefully those middle three or more you gain. And that's just the reality of construction. I think that's probably true of all different types of construction because almost all.
- [30:41]
A
Your work, if not all is price based.
- [30:44]
B
It is you're bidding. Almost all is low bid.
- [30:46]
A
Yeah.
- [30:49]
B
The only I think different from that is the bids or emergencies.
- [30:57]
A
Sure.
- [30:58]
B
And even those now the smaller ones, we, if they have time, unless it's something they got to have some have somebody right now, they call us and we're moving, we're moving within an hour. Emergency work is a huge part of what Scott bridges of our capability. And we might go a whole year of no emergency work. The next. Next year we're doing two or three. Anything from railroads to. It's mostly railroad emergencies but there are others. We're doing a lot of hydro work now and they certainly have a lot of needs because most of the hydro dams are very old. So it'll be enjoyed that.
- [31:36]
A
So with them it'll be a dam is just well or a bridge is well past. It's like hey, this bridge is unstable or the railroad well, just in general, like sometimes it's not always like the bridge has to collapse for it to be an emergency job. Could a bridge just be like this is just we've got to replace it.
- [31:56]
B
That's right. That's right. There can be those situations where they have and that a lot of times that happens on where you have. You still have some old steel trusses or steel plate girders and some things. The bridge is in line to be replaced, but it hadn't been replaced yet. So you go in on an emergency basis and you make a fix for that. So but I think most without question with our company, most of the emergency work that we've done has all been railroads as a result of hurricane devastation like on the Gulf coast and Katrina or emergencies with some old bascule spans where things got off and parts you needed where there was no. There wasn't a set of plans to go do something. And that's one of the, one of the really exciting things that we get to do is to immediately go to the site, meet the owner, study the problem together and then the wheels start turning. We get to think way outside the box and do some.
- [33:01]
A
That's pretty interesting.
- [33:02]
B
Do some really fun things.
- [33:03]
A
Yeah. So you're having to design not just the solution but how to get the solution there.
- [33:11]
B
Oh yeah.
- [33:13]
A
Bridges are fascinating because how you build it is sometimes more exciting and complex than the structure itself.
- [33:23]
B
Oh yes.
- [33:23]
A
Like I'm thinking of the Hoover Dam bypass, for example. I don't know if you've driven by it.
- [33:28]
B
I haven't been over it, but I've seen lots of video about it.
- [33:31]
A
Incredible bridge.
- [33:32]
B
It is.
- [33:32]
A
You drive over it, you, there's nothing exciting about it. You don't even know where you are. If I didn't tell you anything about it, you would have no idea. The Hoover Dam's right below you. You'd have no idea. You're like 600ft off the Colorado river because the barriers are so high. It's just concrete and there's nothing over you. Just concrete. But then how they built it is extraordinary. The structure itself is just mind boggling how they made that thing happen. And so I think that's in part the fascination with bridges is just like, how did they get this here? How did they do this? And I hadn't even thought like when something takes out a bridge for a railroad, it's not like they're handing you the set of plans here, go build this. You've got to figure it out.
- [34:23]
B
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And many times having done it for a long time, I guess they understand and they know us well. And this is both the main lines, the class A's and the short lines. They know that we've got good ideas, some of them new, some of them that we've used before. But they know that we come immediately already with emergency. We've got emergency mobile offices, we've got whole train. We have our own fab shop. So we're able to literally start designing first at the site. We're designing the replacement or designing the fix before we ever leave the site.
- [35:11]
A
On like a Bojangles napkin or something.
- [35:13]
B
Oh yeah, or two by four.
- [35:16]
A
Two by four.
- [35:17]
B
Yeah. Just get your number two pencil or you know, a carpenter dispenser and oh yeah, we've done. Sure. Or just right on the hood of the car. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we've done that. And this is a true story. When we were somewhat pre positioned, we hadn't really moved any equipment yet, but we had gotten the call from Norfolk Southern and CSX to be ready when Katrina was approaching. Nobody knew how bad it would be. But on Tuesday morning the storm hit early morning hours. Of on August, I think it was August 29th of 2005 and it hit early on a Monday morning and on Tuesday morning of course it had cleared and we were moving barges and we were moving cranes and we were moving people and realizing just from the early videos and helicopter flights that we were going to be shutting down the whole company in the southeast. And we were going to be headed to Bay St. Louis to Slidell and all up and down the Pontchartrain Rigolese area which is where Pontchartrain empties out into the Gulf. And there was, I think at the end of the day, in a year's time we put. We're really in about four months we put almost five miles of bridges back in service.
- [36:44]
A
Five miles of bridges. It's a lot of bridges.
- [36:49]
B
It was a two mile bridge right there. Bay St. Louis, they lost the entire superstructure.
- [36:54]
A
So was it just the.
- [36:56]
B
We went. The flooding on Tuesday afternoon late or Wednesday morning. We're in a boat. Chuck Davis, our vice president of engineering and Dan Doty who was a consultant of 4CSX and we're in a boat with a little 90 horsepower motor and we go out into the Wriggle ease out into the swamps and literally we're having to navigate carcasses of animals. Thankfully we didn't see any bodies but just massive debris trying to find what they call the Big Wriggle east bridge is the main channel coming out of Pontchartrain into the Gulf. Big rigoles is all trusses. All the trusses were still standing but barely damaged. Just to the west of there was called the Little Wriggle east bridge. It was a timber bridge, 6, 700 foot long, 400 foot long I think, but very deep because there weren't many areas for the water to come out upon strain. And so it was just a timber pile. I mean it was just. There was nothing recognizable.
- [37:58]
A
It was just floodwaters just carried the bridge away. Right.
- [38:01]
B
And. And this would be interesting to you. So there's an understanding on emergency work and it varies depending on the number of trains on a line. But this was class A. This was their main east west line. It ran from New Orleans all the way to Jacksonville. I mean 30, 40 trains a day normally. I mean there was no. This bridge had these, all of this, this line had to get back open quickly, very quickly. So that's the way you're. That. That's kind of the number one thing you understand. And then you think we immediately inherently knew. You can't get that those long timber Filing that fast, it'd be months. So that's not even option. On the way back in we are designing and literally on the satellite phone we call because there's about a 30 minute boat ride. We called our friends in Savannah, Georgia because we knew they had a bunch of concrete pile available to see if they had, I believe it was some 90 foot to see if they had some 90 foot 24 inch test pile. If they just happened to have some extras and if they didn't, could they make it some really fast? They had two. They put those on the truck on Wednesday morning and headed them, headed them to Slidell.
- [39:23]
A
That's amazing.
- [39:24]
B
And then we followed up immediately with Dan and CSX's engineers and we quickly designed a concrete bridge. And on the 16th of November we opened a brand new concrete bridge to the railroad that enabled them to get to one of the ports where there was a chemical plant. I think it was just in Mississippi on the other side of the Pearl River. The really important line for that plant to get back operating. In the meantime we were putting the superstructure, the new superstructure on the base. St. Louis Bridge which was two miles long and it lost its entire superstructure easy. And the wave elevation there, the combination of the surge and the wave on the Hancock county courthouse at Bay St. Louis was elevation 42. The cast in place concrete spans that were built way, way, way back. 60 foot spans. Heavy, heavy concrete. Each of those spans weighed about 440,000 pounds. We found some of those 300ft north of the bridge. After we got the bridge open that was the next job which really took longer was recovering those and getting them out of that shallow bay.
- [40:43]
A
Ah, so they don't cause any problems. Yeah. Down the road.
- [40:47]
B
But on January 12, George Bush showed up at the St. Denislaus School and Catholic church right there. Just 500ft or 1,000ft from where we were staging all of our barges and cranes and access. And to speak he was on his tour, a follow up tour. He didn't know on that day while he was speaking we literally ran the first train across the bridge. So in four months we, I, except not substructure. We had, we did have to redo the caps a little bit but we kind of built two mile long bridge in four months.
- [41:26]
A
That's the, I think that's the craziest thing about emergency work too is like all right, how would you replace this bridge if you had. Whatever the duration should be is way different than how do you replace this as fast as possible. Just get it done.
- [41:44]
B
That's Right.
- [41:45]
A
That changes everything from the design you said to the materials you can source to the methodology. That condensed timeframe determines how you do it. And oftentimes it's way more dramatic and extraordinary than if you had all the time in the world.
- [42:02]
B
Oh, it is.
- [42:03]
A
It's really cool to see, like emergency work is really cool to see. It is this. And it's just more expensive so you can have more equipment, more people, work more hours. The whole thing is more dramatic.
- [42:13]
B
It's wide open too, because it's like nobody's going to stop you.
- [42:16]
A
Yeah.
- [42:16]
B
And yet is environmentally concerned as we are, as we should be. And we think we, we, we try to be serious about that. Within the limits, you know, that are reasonable. We got to be able to build something. But we always, any job we have, first thing we do is we call the local. Whether it's, you know, whether it's the corps or whether it's. They have these, you know, a lot of groups that. Protecting the local waters.
- [42:46]
A
Yeah.
- [42:46]
B
And we try to let them know we're there. We want them to come see us and tell us their concerns and come frequently because if we're doing something wrong, we want to know. We don't want them to hear from us, you know, when there's a problem, you know, when a manatee floats up dead or something.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:03]
B
You know, we, we want them to know and be partners with us in the process. So emergencies, we, you know, we let the corps know we were there. But we said by St. Louis now we're fixing to push a dirt ramp out into the middle of this disaster. I think it was like going to be about 600ft just to get in where we get to deep enough water.
- [43:23]
A
Yeah.
- [43:24]
B
And we're going to use some self fence. We do the best we can, but we don't have a choice. Are you okay? Look at it. But we don't really have a choice. Well, they understand that. So an emergency. There are a lot of things you set aside when it's all over and done. There are a lot of people ask a lot of questions, especially insurance companies. One of the funny things that happened was we were called into the CSX headquarters in Jacksonville up on the 11th or 20th floor. You know, the biggest conference room I've ever seen in my life. And the engineers that believed in us and we didn't let them down. They kind of pushed me through the door to explain to all the suits why it cost this much. And the one particular thing I'll never forget, one of the young Insurance guys. I think he felt like he had a gotcha. And it was on that little Rigolase bridge. I tell you, that was the timber. Just a timber pile. And we went back immediately with concrete. I think the cost of that replacement was, remember? Exactly. But 7 or 8 million or something like that. If you'd had all the time in the world and you'd ordered timber, you could have replaced it for a half or maybe a third of that. And he just wanted to know why in the world we would do that and why should they pay that extra money? I said, well, you didn't have to. I said, but if you chose not to, then aside from the capital losses, the operational losses that you also insure would have been far, far exceeded that because that rail line would not have been open for about another six months. Sure. So that. That's why these decisions you make have everything to do with the traffic flow, the needs of the owner, and those always vary depending on the nature of the emergency, so. Oh, that's kind of exciting.
- [45:24]
A
That's super exciting. Yeah, it's. It's interesting you talk about the. Some of the environmental stuff, the emergency work, because I feel like. And I. I could be completely wrong about this, but I feel like there was a big project that just got a wrench thrown in it. Big replacement. Emergency replacement project in either.
- [45:45]
B
Tennessee.
- [45:46]
A
I think it was Tennessee. Eastern Tennessee after Helene. For the railroad. Because environmental.
- [45:53]
B
Really.
- [45:53]
A
Yeah.
- [45:54]
B
Maybe not. Now we bid on one. They had. Things are changing a little bit when they have a little more time in this line. There is a Norfolk Southern line up there. There. It only had like one train, maybe three times a week. So that's. There. That's what a lot of difference between that and a train that has 30, 40 trains a day.
- [46:17]
A
Well, I. I think this was a. I think this was mainline.
- [46:20]
B
Okay.
- [46:20]
A
Like, some of the mainline got messed up.
- [46:22]
B
Yes, it did.
- [46:23]
A
And I feel like. Well, based on what I heard they were. And this is. This is. But this is true everywhere. This isn't just the railroad thing. They were mining material out of the river because they needed material for this replacement, and environmental groups got involved. I think that was like the one. Even though it's happening everywhere because the quarries are just tapped out. And it's like. I think I've never met people that are more caring and thoughtful about the environment than people that build stuff, typically. Because most of these people, like you were saying, they're outdoorsmen as well.
- [46:57]
B
They're outdoors.
- [46:58]
A
Yeah. And so people that build stuff and people that Mine and people in the timber industry are extraordinarily caring about the environment. So it's not like let's just go in and just grab all this stuff while we can. It's like this is also critical infrastructure. I don't think you understand. Like these trains aren't. This isn't a nice to have. Like this is. We're transporting stuff that is essential to society that you're using every day. Like how'd you get here? In a car. All right. We probably had something to do with that. Where'd you stay last night? Hotel? House. We had something to do with that. This is big time stuff and I could be completely off base there but I feel like that just happened. Do you have a project you're most fond of?
- [47:55]
B
Gosh, I honestly can say no because there, there's so many remarkable things that we were blessed to get in, be able to be involved in. Yeah, I mean we really have done a lot of really interesting things. It's been a fascinating career and I think anybody here would tell you that. So jobs, you know like the replacing the big turn span in Mobile or CSX Railroad. That was a bid job and it was one of the projects funded by the Coast Guard. So. But it was a long, long time in coming. But it freed up, it changed the navigational channel from really 105, 110ft on one side of a turn span to an open 375 foot opening. So at least a clear 300 foot span.
- [48:54]
A
So the Coast Guard wanted to.
- [48:56]
B
Yeah.
- [48:56]
A
Did they want to use it or did they.
- [48:58]
B
Well that's what the act is called, the Truman Hobbs Act. And Truman Hobbs funds a lot of navigational replacement projects in the country. Among other things probably. But it was Truman Hobbs and it was just the, it was the last bridge over the Tennessee Tom Bigby Waterway and at that point it's become the Mobile River. But of course it goes all the way up and ties in with Tennessee and tremendous amount of navigation. I know after the three day outage when we opened it up again to navigational traffic we opened the railroad portion up after about 24 hours. 36. And then we opened up the rest of it. 72 hours. That was I trying to remember. I think There were about 40 tows upstream and downstream in total waiting. They were backed up.
- [50:03]
A
Wow.
- [50:04]
B
Just in three days waiting to traverse that area. That's very valuable.
- [50:09]
A
Well that's a lot of pressure too because you're. Yeah, you're getting pressure from both directions from the water traffic and the railroad, they both want it.
- [50:19]
B
Yeah. So that was an interesting project. But then you can go way back. Those bridges I was speaking of earlier, across Lake Lanier, and then the bridge I started on the port of foundations at Collider Bridge in Alabama, Lake Martin. And then fast forward 20 years, and we're on Lake Lanier in Gainesville, Georgia. And those are 125 foot deep. You know, really interesting, fascinating things. But in the meantime, doing a lot of other river work on the Tennessee river, we've built most, not all, but most of the bridges on the Tennessee River. It was just a niche. I think every contractor has those areas of work that they're really good at and that their employees really enjoy doing. And so my grandfather was just a really, really wise man in so many ways. And the older I got, the more I understood and thankfully did listen enough to learn a little bit of what he knew. The rest of it has come along with age and years saying, yeah, he was exactly right about that. But he always said, and I really have adhered to this, don't outbid your people. That means don't take a job just because you can. Just because you got the bond capacity. Don't do that. Don't even think about it. Yeah, it's a recipe for disaster. Know your people, know their strengths. Don't take on work that you don't have that core. It doesn't mean you can't go out and hire additional people to help you. You necessarily have to do that. But make sure you've got that core of real bridge builders that know your culture, they've grown up in your culture, and they understand the importance of safety, which is everything to me. Everything. Safety is all about family. That's who we are. If you understand that and you've got those people, then just don't go beyond that. Don't take on work that you're not. That you don't have the people to do it.
- [52:36]
A
Because this is a pretty complex craft in a lot of ways.
- [52:40]
B
It is.
- [52:42]
A
It's very specialized. So experience does matter quite a bit with what you all do.
- [52:50]
B
It matters a lot.
- [52:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way I explain the engineering, like the difference between a civil degree and a mechanical degree, too, is mechanical degree, you want stuff to move. Civil degree, you don't want stuff to move.
- [53:07]
B
That's well said.
- [53:08]
A
Yeah. That's the best way I could explain. Maybe I picked it up from somebody, but that's. That's the best way I can explain it. Stuff moves. Civil stuff does not move. Yeah, but stuff is trying to make stuff move and you're trying to make it not move.
- [53:22]
B
Yeah.
- [53:22]
A
And it's all, it's just so, it's so fascinating because it's like this battle against physics, against water, against wind, against gravity, most importantly.
- [53:34]
B
Yeah.
- [53:35]
A
Against the motion of whatever's going across, the loading of what's ever going across. There's all these different things at play, and you just want it to stay put and do its job. That's it. It's very simple. But there's a lot to consider.
- [53:49]
B
There's a lot to consider. There really is. I think it's all those things play into what such, such a fascinating business. But it's a. It's a very, very risky business. And I know that. I mean, I, I wouldn't be here, and I'm certainly not smart enough to have hand selected all these incredible men and women and their families and their spouses. I believe it certainly is my faith. I know God brought everybody. I know he provided everything we've always needed, most importantly, the people to do the work. Folks that, number one, they, they loved the business, they loved working. That was their gift. And that's why I really stress with the young people we get to talk to and being here close to Auburn University, we do a lot and we really encourage any young, especially freshmen. We love to catch the freshmen coming in. And we're doing a lot more in high school tonight. As you know, as a number of our friends in the industry, CW Matthews and others are doing. We're investing in high school kids and giving them a little bit of a taste of this can be a fun career.
- [55:08]
A
Yeah.
- [55:08]
B
Letting them pull some levers and kind of get a taste of what we do. So. But when we get them in here, I mean, we want them to understand and we want them to. We want them. First of all, like I said earlier, we want them to know that our interest is what you're. If you're happy, you know, we're going to be happy. And if you're dedicated and you love this, it's going to be good for everybody. But if we can catch them early in college and encourage them to work their summers, don't play all the time, take advantage of it. Doesn't matter about the job. It doesn't matter what the job description is. Just be in the environment of the workplace that you think you want to make your career, that you want to spend the rest of your life, and by doing that, you at least have a little bit of a taste so you don't get to graduation. And now you got a degree in something you can't stand.
- [56:03]
A
Well, and even I watched a lot of people even get engineering degrees and struggle with finding a job after school because they had no real world experience.
- [56:12]
B
No real world experience.
- [56:13]
A
And so if you graduate with a degree in whatever, you are no different than everybody graduating with that degree. That's right. It really doesn't matter. And maybe there's some differentiation, maybe, maybe with your grade point average or whatever it is, but there's no differentiation. Whereas if you work even just one summer now there's a point, a significant point of differentiation. It becomes easier to then get the right job and get a job in the category you want to get a job in too. Because even civil engineering, for example, or construction. Civil construction. There's a lot there. A lot there.
- [56:51]
B
There's a lot.
- [56:53]
A
And you've got to go try some stuff out. Like maybe you are a bridge person, but maybe you're not a bridge person. Maybe you're a road person, maybe you're a dirt person, maybe you're a pipe person. There's all different power. There's all different categories.
- [57:05]
B
That's true.
- [57:06]
A
They all offer different things. And you just don't know until you try it out.
- [57:10]
B
You don't know. And I know that during Katrina that I was talking about one of, I think the second year that we were there, the second spring, or maybe it was the first spring after the. So it's 2006. My daughter that was at Auburn at the time, a group of her friends that were just great friends, I took about 10 guys, 10 gals of her close friends and we went down to Bay St. Louis and did a fast bill on a home that was being a Katrina house that was being built for a week. And it was such a blast to be with them. And I know I had at least probably more fun than they did. But you know, in doing that, I met a guy who was already on campus as a campus Campus Crusade for Christ minister, I think. But he was, he was a student, but he's also a civil engineer or studying civil engineering. And he was getting ready to graduate. And I said, well, you know, I liked him. I said, why don't you come by and visit one day? He brought his transcript and he was not the best student. He reminded me of myself. I survived Georgia Tech. I didn't set any records, certainly not on the top end. Probably challenged some of the low records. But when I walked him out, I didn't see what he came pulled up in. But I enjoyed visiting with him again and I'm a hands on guy. I didn't really fully appreciate it until I walked him out, saw his truck. He had tool chests. Not just across the back, tool chest all the way down the sides, loaded down, his resume included. He was a certified daughter, he was a certified welder. He had all these other activities that he hadn't wasted his life. He was very hands on. That is the guy right there. That's kind of a no brainer hire. And he did come to work for us for a good while. So, you know, I encourage, I really encourage young people take the opportunity to really explore the field in the field that you're looking to make, make a lifetime out of as professional.
- [59:18]
A
Yeah. Bridges are not necessarily getting younger. No, I don't actually know. Bridge is getting younger. Every bridge is getting older and there's a lot of bridges and there's like the US Bridge Report, you know, US Society of Civil Engineers or whatever. American Society of Civil Engineers. I don't know who does it. But talking about how bridges are only getting older and we're going to have to replace all of these at some point. All of them will have to get replaced unless they're not used anymore. It seems like a lot of what you all do is replacement work. This isn't new stuff like we need a new bridge here. Most of it is replacing what's already existing in some fashion.
- [60:02]
B
I think that's certainly true. I think it is true. In the 60s and 70s and 80s it was new locations. You know, the interstate system was going in 50s, 60s, 70s, new routes. The larger metropolitan areas were certainly growing. So you had interstate loops around the cities. You had an awful lot of new location. But as the, as all of that, those early bridges that were built in the 40s, even 30s, 40s, 50s, particularly 60s, now those, those are needing to be replaced. And not all of them because they're structurally, structurally unsafe. They're just functionally obsolete. They can't handle the traffic. The lanes are not wide enough. And you still have, especially up north, I don't spend a lot of time there. But Pittsburgh and so many cities that have rivers and all, there's still these really very old truss bridges. These overhead through truss bridges are in terrible shape. New York, I mean, those are, those are major bridges that have already outlived their life expectancy by decades probably. And those are not cheap to replace. No, they are not cheap.
- [61:26]
A
No, it'll be. I'm actually kind of curious to see how all that Works out because there is so much to replace, it seems like on the rail side and just automotive, interstate, et cetera. And I feel like people forget how much rail there still is in America. We're a big place, we've got to move stuff from A to Z. A lot of it goes by rail, especially anything heavy. It's by far the well by river's the cheapest way to do it. Rail second cheapest then truck. But truck is a lot more expensive. So if you can put it on rail, it's a lot cheaper. There's rail bridges all over the place and some of them are 100 plus years old, which is amazing.
- [62:09]
B
And, and the same is true for hydro dams, the cheapest form of electricity. Alabama has a lot of Georgia, many other states and these hydro dams, almost all of them built 100 years ago. So we're doing in the last 10 years a lot of our in house engineering capability that we have has, has been, you know, well utilized doing work for Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Southern Company, Gulf Power, Power south, you know, great company here in Alabama, in Florida. And, and we're, we're able to come in and help them, but we're taking out, we're taking out gates, we're taking out things and some of them down in the bottom of the dam that have not been seen in a hundred years.
- [62:56]
A
Wow.
- [62:56]
B
Pieces and parts and we're pulling them out and taking them into our shop, rebuilding them and in some cases totally replacing them. And this is very much, it's almost like a daily kind of an emergency in a way because you don't know what you got until you pull it out, look at it and then you have a plan. But many times those plans change quickly. So the ability we've always had to respond quickly has really benefited us and our relationship with the power companies on these hydro dams. And it's been very exciting work here over the last 10, 15 years.
- [63:36]
A
We were on a railroad project recently in North Carolina and the steel rails, it all still said Carnegie Steel on it. It's like, wow, that's a name that hasn't been around in a while. But that's a big name.
- [63:51]
B
Pretty big name.
- [63:52]
A
Yeah. But it dates that steel. It's like, yeah, this is, this is old stuff along your way. Is there a project that has not necessarily stumped you but was more difficult than what originally met the eye?
- [64:11]
B
Well, certainly we've gotten jobs. I think this is true for any contractor that does what we do and been surprised by some things. We've never been not been able to solve the problem. But it's cost more than we had in our bid for sure. Thankfully we don't have too many of those, but you're going to come across those. I do remember one job in Savannah. This was a widening. It was a four laning of a bridge going out to Tybee island and it was a, it was a movable span, a bascule, maybe a double leaf. I can't remember exactly but there were some power lines. There were some things about once you got the first phase done, the removal that we literally, it's the only bit I ever remember submitting and not feeling comfortable that we had really solved the problem. We didn't get the job. Thankfully we, we put money in there for something we really didn't understand. But that one has always stuck with me. And the contractor that did get it is really, I mean they, they have a hard time, they've suffered. I'm. I think, I'm not sure how they ended up, you know, solving the problem. But occasionally there are those and, but usually you're able to figure something out. That's the fun part. And when you turn the bid in, you may find out you didn't. There was a better way. You know, somebody else had a better idea. We've had those too. And I applaud those contractors for coming up with those ideas. We're not alone in having some interesting ways of going about things, but I'm really proud of the reputation of what our employees have built here.
- [66:02]
A
Well, you play in an interesting market too because you'll compete with small local contractors and then you'll probably at points compete with some of the biggest contractors in America.
- [66:14]
B
We did.
- [66:16]
A
And so like very, very, very few companies are bidding in both of those realms and every, everywhere in between. But it's, it's specialized.
- [66:27]
B
Yeah, we really do. Now we don't if we are. I call them hub jobs around the Southeast, you know, might be the mobile area. We've been in and out of the Savannah area for years. Same thing with Augusta. In and out of there a number of times. Florida just. And when we're there it's a, we got a pretty decent field office set up and quite a number of employees there. I'll call them little satellite jobs that'll come up in the middle of a three year project. And those are, those are just nice little add ons. I'm not sure that they've ever been really profitable. Occasionally they are the ones that are is because we have a workforce that is significant in A given area around the Southeast. If there is an emergency, a railroad bridge dam or something, we have crews and people relatively close by that can respond very quickly. Not just, not just out of Opeli.
- [67:31]
A
Yeah, I see.
- [67:32]
B
So there are. That's just, that's just the way our business has played out with the specialty type of work that we do. And yeah, we can build overpasses and dryland. We've built interchanges before and redesign those through a value engineering process. In particular the one in Augusta, you asked me about favorite projects. That was a really, really great project and $200 million, it was the largest contract we'd ever had at the time we were joint ventured in that with United Contractors, my friend Jim Triplett out of South Carolina. It was a great partnership. Friends in the business is another thing that I really value through this whole process. Looking back now over 50 years of, of doing this, it's just in the friendships you build and those friendships within the industry that certainly has played a big role in the work that we had the opportunity to do. One more. I don't want to not mention this one because it would be an outlier until I tell you why it really won. It was perfect. That was the 96 Olympics, the Atlanta Centennial Games. The 96 Olympics. We did two venues. We ended up building two venues for the committee. And the first one, they really both started in like end of 94, we were bidding. The first one was in Atlanta on Lake Lanier where we built these bridges earlier. And that's where the rowing venue was held. All the yacht, not the yachting, but the rowing venue. So everything from the skulls, the long skulls and all that competition. So you had to have a long, straight, fairly calm water. So. And that was a perfect location for it. But environmentalists wouldn't let them cut down any trees to build grandstands, you know, on the banks of the river.
- [69:36]
A
Yeah.
- [69:37]
B
So we literally ended up. They took bids and they didn't like the bids because it was all prefab stuff that was highly over designed. And so we said, well, let us take a shot at designing something for you. So we literally, with some knowledge of the lake, we designed a five acre platform, temporary platform out in Lake Lanier. We decked it with steel pipe pile, 24 inch. We used cross frames, if you will. The type of things that you see ceiling joists, if you look up in any large air room or industry building, metal butler building, you see the ceiling joists, little trusses. And so we floored it with that and then aluminum planking and then aluminum, like baseball, like grandstands. And we put aluminum grandstands on. All of that was reusable, replaceable, and we returned it. So it was temporary, and they gave us the job. And all of that took about four months to sell them on that. And then I got a call. Hey, we also have a. We got a venue down in Savannah out in the Wasatch Sound, right off of the Atlantic Ocean. It's the yachting venue. I said, okay, what's that? Well, it was a marina they wanted to build. They called it the Day Marina, but It was also five acres, but it's about 10 miles from the mouth into Savannah. So the daily during competition, that wouldn't work for the sailors and all the competitors. So we said, okay, tell me what you need. And over a weekend on a piece of eight and a half by 11:14, paper just drew an EO. And we ended up, over a year's time, collected and rented 26 crane barges. And we put extra long steel pipes in the spud pockets on all four corners. We painted them white. We put international flags on top. We carpeted the top of the old steel barges with some cheap gray carpet I bought at Walmart, Lowe's or something like that. And then there was a long barge, kind of on the long part of the E, if you look down on it. And that's where all the trailers, the competition trailers, the food trailers and bathrooms and everything was. All this is temporary, just created on a dining room table. And no different than a high school homecoming float. You know, just simple solutions. Big problems that were just a blast. I remember the king of Spain showed up and he was like, didn't want to leave. You know, they couldn't get rid of it. Like, this is an amazing thing. Australia is where it was the next year. And the Australians wanted us. Come to Australia. I said, no, thank you. Yeah, I don't have any interest in that.
- [72:41]
A
Yeah, it's a little further over way, so.
- [72:43]
B
A lot of fun. A lot of. Yeah, a lot of fun projects.
- [72:45]
A
Did they give you tickets at least?
- [72:48]
B
Well, we had access, and no, they didn't give me any tickets.
- [72:55]
A
Yeah, that sounds about right.
- [72:57]
B
We. Yeah, no, they didn't give me tickets. Think about that. I need to call Bob.
- [73:02]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the Olympics is coming back to the States here.
- [73:08]
B
I hope it does. It's coming to Los Angeles.
- [73:11]
A
I think it's coming to Los Angeles. We'll see how that goes. Yeah, I think I have my questions like most people do, but it's Coming.
- [73:18]
B
You know, you didn't see much of our yachting venue because they sold the rights to New Zealand. Yachting is, like, the number one sport in New Zealand.
- [73:25]
A
Yeah.
- [73:26]
B
And so they actually had all the TV rights. So you really didn't see very much of it on television. You saw a lot of the rowing venues.
- [73:32]
A
I see.
- [73:33]
B
But when I tell people, years after, they said, well, I don't remember seeing any of that. No, you didn't really see much of it. But it was very exciting. Very big deal for Savannah. Very, extremely well done. And, you know, of course, the only disappointing thing, obviously, was the bomber in Centennial Park. And that was a bummer on probably one of the most successful Olympic games they'd ever had.
- [74:00]
A
Yeah. I wasn't born. When was it?
- [74:04]
B
96.
- [74:05]
A
96. Okay. So I was born. I was born in 95. No. Savannah. One of my favorite places in the United States.
- [74:13]
B
Beautiful. It's just beautiful.
- [74:14]
A
I love it. And it is a weird place. It is just a weird city. There's just so much.
- [74:19]
B
It's just based on St. Patrick today.
- [74:21]
A
Yeah, yeah. I avoid St. Patrick's Day. I've heard enough. It's just very eclectic.
- [74:27]
B
It is square.
- [74:30]
A
Yeah.
- [74:31]
B
Yeah.
- [74:31]
A
But even, like, the people there, because you have the uni, you have scad, which is a very eclectic crowd.
- [74:37]
B
That's right. Yeah.
- [74:38]
A
You have the United States military and the rangers, which is eclectic in a different way.
- [74:45]
B
Very much.
- [74:46]
A
You have the tourism bringing just random people in from all over the. It's just such an interesting mix of individual. And then the ghosts, of course.
- [74:55]
B
Oh, yes.
- [74:56]
A
Yeah. Yeah, the ghosts.
- [74:57]
B
And we've just spent the last three years there again, in the Savannah area. I know port expansion and river crossing.
- [75:05]
A
I was trying to go mountain.
- [75:06]
B
There's a lot of. That was. And we're still. We still got about another eight or nine months on the Brampton road connector. Because the Georgia port's the fastest growing port facility in the world as far as containers.
- [75:18]
A
Yep.
- [75:19]
B
It's like. It'll be up to 10,000 containers a day coming and going.
- [75:23]
A
Easy.
- [75:23]
B
So it's tractor trailers. Tractor trailers. And it's just. This is a better access route in, into the port, into and out of. Cause you got a lot of railroad tracks, too. So that's been a tough and a fascinating project.
- [75:37]
A
Yeah.
- [75:38]
B
Hats off to the people that designed it. Figuring it out.
- [75:41]
A
Even just in the south, too. It's all so old. You're just dealing with Right. Of ways and designs from a long time ago that don't make any sense. Now, but are there before you're there and you've just got to deal with it. You're talking about how they do a lot of stuff in the water now. Drilled shafts. Do they do that from a barge?
- [76:07]
B
Yes.
- [76:09]
A
So they'll have a machine out from.
- [76:11]
B
A barge or a work bridge sometimes if it's not a real wide crossing. Obviously you might be better in the depth of the water. Might suggest that a work doing. Doing it off of a work dock.
- [76:27]
A
Like a temporary bridge.
- [76:29]
B
Bridge. Temporary work dock. Temporary work bridge. Drive pile or three or four hundred feet and. But then you do the same thing sitting on it. You do the same thing as if your. Your drill shaft machine was sitting on a barge.
- [76:41]
A
Yeah, yeah. But the drilled shaft, you're. You're installing that foundation. But it's just a much smaller footprint than what you explained before.
- [76:50]
B
Yeah. A drill shaft is really one very large pile. A very large pile. And they vary in size. But the ones that are used on bridges, I don't think I've seen any less than 36 inch. Most of them would be in the 48 to 54 inch. And then when you get into river foundations, you would. There might be 6 or more 48 inch, 54 inch diameter, 60 inch that are just like driving piling, except you're installing drill shafts and you cut them off there, you get them to where they're poured up above the water and then you pour a footing on top of those just like you would if you had driven piling. I see some people call those floating footings or. That's primarily what they do in Florida.
- [77:47]
A
But the way it works for people that haven't been around it is you're kind of like poking a hole in the. I don't know how to explain it. It's kind of like your cofferdam concept.
- [78:01]
B
It is.
- [78:02]
A
It's a structure that you're digging within, pouring concrete within.
- [78:06]
B
But it is a pipe.
- [78:08]
A
Putting a cage within. But it's like a pipe.
- [78:09]
B
It is a steel pipe.
- [78:10]
A
Yes. Yes.
- [78:11]
B
And some of them are as big as 12ft in diameter.
- [78:15]
A
Yeah.
- [78:15]
B
But you're unusual.
- [78:16]
A
You're using that to keep your. The water out.
- [78:19]
B
That's right.
- [78:20]
A
While you're building.
- [78:21]
B
And it goes. Goes well into 10, 15, 20, 30ft, whatever the four conditions require. Until it gets down to rock and to a density of rock that's significant enough for it to be founded on and to lock it into the bottom so that it can withstand overturning forces, horizontal pressures and moments. And then you do. You go down inside it with an auger or whatever and you dig it out just like you're digging out the cofferdam. Then you set a rebar cage. It's a circular rebar cage. You set that down in there and then just like I would set the cage inside the cofferdam and then you pour it with the same type of trimming thing where you're pouring. The end of the hose never comes out openly into water. Concrete is delivered into wet concrete. And the plume of concrete, of course it fills up a six foot pipe a lot quicker than it fills up a 30 foot cofferdale. And it rises until you get it all the way above the water.
- [79:31]
A
And then you get rid of the steel pipe.
- [79:34]
B
Well, they used to remove the steel pipes more times than not now those stay in place.
- [79:40]
A
Is that right?
- [79:41]
B
Yeah, they stay in place.
- [79:42]
A
Okay.
- [79:43]
B
Yeah, it's cheaper.
- [79:44]
A
I see. Yeah, I guess, I guess that makes sense. Okay, so.
- [79:47]
B
But. And you would listen, you didn't just slide them off unless you had put some kind of expensive liner on the inside.
- [79:53]
A
Yeah.
- [79:54]
B
And then you might could. Most of them had to be cut off.
- [79:57]
A
I see.
- [79:58]
B
Some fashion. So it really was just cheaper to.
- [80:00]
A
Your concrete and cage. That's the structural component.
- [80:04]
B
Yes, that's right.
- [80:05]
A
But this steel, this is.
- [80:07]
B
This is structural concrete you're pouring. It's a higher strength concrete than say the seal concrete that you poured. Yeah, a little bit higher.
- [80:17]
A
What is the job? Coming up on the Gulf coast, the real big one.
- [80:22]
B
The big one is finally the replacement of the i10 tunnels going under the Mobile river downtown. Mobile. So finally Mobile will get a second cable stay bridge, but it will be actually carrying i10. There is a cable stay bridge that was built 25 years ago or more called the Cochrane Bridge. But it's just north of town and it was built to accommodate truck traffic and other types of hazardous type tractors and trailers that they didn't go through the tunnel and it went up north. That's just north of I 10. Maybe three miles the most two miles and it crosses and then it goes over and ties in with i165 which is just a spur that comes right along the river down into downtown Mobile. Yeah, but this is. This will be a. Goodness. It's over 2,000 foot center span. I've forgotten. Exactly. It'll be a double. A single diamond. The towers, the main towers. The towers will be well back from the river because the river at that point at the most is 1000 foot wide.
- [81:40]
A
So that. Oh, so the towers are both on Land.
- [81:43]
B
Yes, yes.
- [81:44]
A
And it's cable stayed.
- [81:45]
B
It's cable stayed. Bridge across. That's right. And it's a progressive design build project that the. The team of Kiewit, Massman and Trailer kmt.
- [81:57]
A
Okay.
- [81:58]
B
All great American companies. Yeah, we, we really, really are excited about being on their team. And it's that our kind of folks, we've known for years and especially well, Kiewit is so large an ESOP company and one of the truly great all American companies that's left. Massman's a lot like us, a little bigger and Trailer brothers like us. Except I think they do a lot of asphalt work and plants and do a lot of road work. We really don't do any road work. We sub all that out.
- [82:36]
A
So it's all companies involved in this.
- [82:39]
B
There's the three main companies there, the joint venture for this progressive design Bill. And then they selected other contractors, subcontractors, a lot of local contractors, including us here in Alabama as kind of like dedicated subs or we still just like they do. We had to submit a price.
- [83:01]
A
Yeah.
- [83:02]
B
That's kind of the beauty of the progressive design bill. You do get design along with the dot. That, that and I do love the concept because to me it's like going to an emergency job. You know, everybody's got the same purpose. You're on the same team, you're designing together.
- [83:19]
A
Yeah.
- [83:20]
B
This is what this is. Although the state is. Is heavily dependent upon the contractor that they selected. They went through a selection process, but it's. There's no price component to it.
- [83:31]
A
But then they have to price the work.
- [83:33]
B
But then you. They do. After agreeing on the plans, it gets to a certain stage, whether it's 50% or 30%. And there is a not to exceed price. They have a name for that.
- [83:49]
A
I've forgotten the initials, but that's been getting exceeded like GMP or some time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [83:54]
B
Gross. Gross. Max price. Yeah, something like that.
- [83:57]
A
Yeah. Gmp.
- [83:57]
B
Gmp. That's a. I remember that.
- [84:00]
A
Yeah. Very good.
- [84:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that, that becomes the target, you know, with certain flexibilities and then you're continuing with the design. But at the end of the day when it's at least maybe, maybe it's 90% complete, maybe it's 100. This is where. This is what protects the taxpayer. They have to present a price. Alabama DOT has a price now. They've hired an independent. They have their own price. They've hired an independent consultant to price it as well. And then there's a Negotiation.
- [84:34]
A
Sure, there's a negotiation.
- [84:38]
B
The incentive to the contractor is you have to be negotiable, right?
- [84:43]
A
Yeah.
- [84:44]
B
And maybe your price comes right in and everybody's happy, but you gotta be negotiable. Because if the state has the option to say, we tried, we couldn't agree, but we now own the plans and we're going to put it out to bid. Yeah, you would have the right to bid on it. The owner would. I mean, the contractor would, but so would everybody else. Well, obviously you worked all that time together. Neither side wants to, you know, change horses in the middle of the stream, but it keeps, it protects the taxpayer in that you're not going to have. Just because they were selected, it doesn't mean they can double the price. I love it. And I actually think, although it's mostly used for large projects, I've seen some applications and very difficult railroad jobs. We did one down for the Brightline Railroad, two bascule bridges and one in Stewart, Florida. Florida on the Atlantic, one in Stuart, Florida and one in Jupiter, Florida. Jupiter was almost a complete rebuild, but it started out just being a superstructural placement. But the foundation that Henry Flagler built was just in really bad shape. And we ended up doing a design. So in a lot of ways on that project, it was kind of like a progressive design build. Even though we had to bid was we, we, we couldn't. Scott Bridge nor Brightline could have built that without our partnership. It was very, very rewarding professionally and, and successful as a, you know, the goal is to make a profit. So, yeah, you know, we made a profit. But the professional part of it is what was so exciting to me.
- [86:26]
A
The progressive design build concept is quite interesting. And for people that haven't been too familiar with this, they essentially, like State says, hey, we've got to replace this tunnel. We're going to look at some options. Is it a new tunnel? Is it a bridge? How do we do this? Okay, it's a bridge. Okay, what kind of bridge? Probably cable stay. Like they have a rough idea of what they need and why they need it, but it's not. Here's your bridge plans. This is what we need. Priced like traditionally, it's, hey, we're going to design this together. So you're working with the state, the engineering firm and then the contractor. They're all working together in theory to create the best product possible, which theoretically gets the taxpayer the best value.
- [87:26]
B
That's right.
- [87:27]
A
It gets the contractor a good outcome, a good project. That's, that's not Easy to build, but efficient to build because they helped design it, to build it.
- [87:41]
B
Correct.
- [87:41]
A
And everybody walks away happy. Two thumbs up. Yeah, it's quite interesting.
- [87:49]
B
It's very interesting. Particularly if you feel like us and a lot of contractors, we've got our own in house engineering team. We have, we have explored a lot of options on a lot of different things. And as far as creativity, it's just wide open to that. But now so is design build. Design build's been around a long time, but in there you get to explore and utilize the things that you do best into the design. And then you submit your price, you've been selected. You're probably one of three or four contractors if you get that far. And then. But it's still, it's still a competitive vid. And we just recently were very successful. It's the biggest job now, the biggest job that we've ever had on contract is the Dupont Bridge on Highway 98 in Panama City. Going from east out of Panama City, crossing over onto Tyndall Air Base and on down to Apalachicola and down into the Big Bend area of Florida. There's a major bridge, a single single smaller four lane that's now being replaced by twin bridges.
- [89:04]
A
Okay.
- [89:05]
B
And it's a four year project and we are about 50% through the design phase of it. I got you. And it's. But it is a design bill as opposed to a progressive design bill. But it didn't need this, that one really didn't need, need to be progressive design bill. It fit design bill perfectly. Some of these others, as you described, you know, there's no certainty on what type of bridge, what's the best. Maybe, maybe they decide they want a bridge. In this case, that certainly was decided in Mobile by a lot of preliminary engineering, by several consultants in considering options. What's there now is the existing tunnels. They certainly didn't want another tunnel because that's, that's been problematic. And the traffic is so heavy on i10 now. It just backs up every day. You know, somebody sneezes and the traffic backs up on that byway and it's six, seven miles across the bay. Across the bayway.
- [90:03]
A
Yeah, I've actually heard, I've heard about how bad it is.
- [90:08]
B
Yeah.
- [90:08]
A
I haven't experienced it myself.
- [90:09]
B
There's just, if you're local, you take the old causeway.
- [90:12]
A
Yeah.
- [90:13]
B
And we're doing some work on that. So it's going to be very, very interesting over the next few years. But it's, we're really excited about that. As we are about dupont and all these opportunities, we're blessed beyond measure. We always have been. I don't know why. Nothing we did to deserve it, but we. It starts with our people. And I, I can't say enough about that. And then the friends in our industry, whatever, whatever good we've accomplished, we've accomplished it together. And the friends hopefully have friends. And they say a few good things about you. And when somebody asks, well, have you heard of this company? We were thinking about letting, maybe talking to them about helping us with our problem. And then. Your reputation's everything. It starts with safety. It's always been important to us. We feel like we were doing safety when safety wasn't cool. Back in the late 60s, early 70s, we were probably one of the first contractors our size to have our own hire, our own person who was safety. That was his number one job, was safety. And that was Jack's worth out, Jerry's son. And that was in 1970. 71, really.
- [91:34]
A
That is way back.
- [91:35]
B
And Jack is retired now, but he and I were kind of of the same age and partners for many, many years. And he lives in the area doing well. But we've been those kind of things that we, you know, we've gotten to do and the people that have enabled us to be able to do it and build that reputation. But understanding every day that safety is a. At the heart of it for us. And if we. We know every day when we get up, all of our superintendents know this. Every. Hopefully all of our employees know that we can lose 92 years of a good reputation in about 5 minutes or less if we do something stupid.
- [92:16]
A
Yeah.
- [92:17]
B
So it's. It is a particularly risky business, but with risk comes huge rewards. And I'm not talking about financial. I'm talking about the incredible opportunities that you get to do and this all goes together.
- [92:32]
A
How do you keep track of so many people spread out so much? Do you just live in the car? I used to. Yeah, I used to.
- [92:42]
B
I let some of the younger folks do that now.
- [92:44]
A
Yeah. You asked me how many miles am.
- [92:45]
B
I was never really excited about having an airplane. And I kind of resisted that for a long time. Chuck Davis, our vice president of engineering, he got just an incredible reputation, incredible construction slash engineer. But he's always been an avid pilot. So for probably a decade, every month I'd get a copy of a King Air magazine on my desk. He used to show me the latest. And you'd have little thumb tabs, you know, for me to be sure to look at. Well, but it finally. I finally realized one day I was driving to Savannah and I'd done this many times and come back in the same day, but that. That particular year, and I think it was 2008, 2009, I. It just wasn't quite as easy. A little arthritis, a little other things. And I said, you know, this is as easy as it used to be. I used to drive Charleston and. And be home at night, Took my girls in bed.
- [93:46]
A
Wow.
- [93:47]
B
Same day. That's six hours there, six hours back.
- [93:49]
A
Yeah.
- [93:50]
B
And no one working. I didn't spend very long on the job, but yeah. Did what I had to do. Came back. So I said, well, maybe it's a good idea. Find me a. Find me a whole. I'm almost like. New airplane. And we got a Baron G58. Oh, those cockpit. Oh, fantastic. Yes. Piston, twin engine.
- [94:11]
A
Yeah.
- [94:11]
B
I don't like single engines.
- [94:13]
A
Yeah.
- [94:14]
B
But that doesn't click with me. I know they're fast, but anyway, so. And then five years or less at 13, I think about five years later, we had the same opportunity to get a 90 GTX King Air.
- [94:29]
A
Wow.
- [94:30]
B
And we still have that today. And we kept the Baron for a long time as a second airplane. Kind of wish we had it back now, but. But now it's. With how. How do we do it now? Plenty of still drive. It's just in the Southeast for the most part. But it's certainly. Along with all of the IT advantages we have now. Pictures, live video of a problem. We're looking at it downstairs in the war room. I call it the bedroom that you saw. And we're pulling it up. We're solving problems in a matter of an hour as opposed to two, three days.
- [95:06]
A
I see.
- [95:07]
B
And so it's like any industry. Everything. Everything's changed. But the being able to get around, you know, depending on importance. It doesn't have to be a plain fool. If it's. It may just be a foreman, it may just be a superintendent.
- [95:21]
A
Yeah.
- [95:22]
B
Or it may be something for one of our employees and they just a family matter plaintiffs. It's been a wonderful asset to have.
- [95:30]
A
Yeah. It's. It's not like people. They hear plane, think it's a luxury. It's not really a luxury in this business. I know a lot of people planes and I mean, sometimes it can get pretty luxurious.
- [95:43]
B
Well, pretty big Planes can be abused easily.
- [95:45]
A
Like anything.
- [95:46]
B
But for us.
- [95:47]
A
But it's a tool.
- [95:47]
B
It's a tool for us. I think I can honestly say it is. It's not a. It's not a pleasure asset. There's a couple of times or two or three, but it's not often when we, you know something, it just helps out.
- [96:04]
A
Yeah.
- [96:05]
B
Myself and my brother, his family or one of our other employees. Or maybe it's employees mom who's got a serious medical issue and she's got to go somewhere. Any employee would do that. Any employer would do that at a plane to help their employees. But other than that, I think we probably 95% percent of our use of our plane. 90, maybe 98% is our primary mission. Building bridges.
- [96:32]
A
Yeah. So you're not looking at the gulf streams in Savannah. They're like, you know, maybe we get one of those.
- [96:37]
B
We got a little part interest in a G30. G31. It was a Lear 31.
- [96:46]
A
Yeah. Okay.
- [96:47]
B
We had a little 25% interest for two years.
- [96:49]
A
Yeah.
- [96:49]
B
I think we put a total of 25 hours in a year on it.
- [96:53]
A
Yeah.
- [96:53]
B
Well, that is not affordable.
- [96:55]
A
The hours on those is. Are way more expensive on a baron.
- [97:02]
B
Make that plenty more. But no jets. We don't need that.
- [97:05]
A
Yeah.
- [97:05]
B
Our. Our mission range is, you know, usually in the 200, 300 mile category.
- [97:11]
A
Sure.
- [97:12]
B
So, you know, a King air. King Air 90 is perfect for that.
- [97:14]
A
Well, a jet, it almost gets inconvenient because now it starts to restrict where you can land and just how quickly you can turn things around. Like a King Air. You can land it on a field if you need to.
- [97:26]
B
You could.
- [97:27]
A
Yeah. Like it's not recommended, but you can.
- [97:30]
B
That's the reason that plane is just one of the. It's been around since the army or the air force funded it in the late 50s, I think 60, maybe they've celebrated their 50th anniversary. It's a remarkable, remarkable airplane. And there's no such thing as an old King Air. They just keep putting new engines on them and dressing them up. They're very well designed airplanes. But that's all I know about airplanes.
- [97:59]
A
Yeah. I don't know anything. I know I want one because for that reason, just to get around faster. But then my problem is, so you're.
- [98:05]
B
Still young, you don't have back trouble. You keep driving and keep flying and renting cars.
- [98:10]
A
Yeah, well, economically speaking, that's what I have to do. But my problem is now my geographic range is bigger. Is bigger than a few hundred miles. So now it's very cost prohibitive. But maybe one day building airlines, it.
- [98:27]
B
Is jets, things like that are pricey. And even King Air snare. I can sell my plane. It's 10 years old. I could sell it for a good bit more.
- [98:37]
A
They keep. They keep their value. Those king airs. It is crazy how expensive they are.
- [98:42]
B
They do. And you know, I can't buy. They don't make king. They don't make the King Air 90 anymore. Or I might have been tempted to trade. I would have. But they don't make that plane. And so. And as Chuck says, it's still a baby airplane. It's still young. 10 years.
- [98:58]
A
Yeah. Yeah. 10 years.
- [98:58]
B
Yeah.
- [98:59]
A
It really isn't much. Yeah. Um, growing up, my friend had a. He was getting his pilot's license and they had. They had mains. So he. He had a Baron that he. He learned on, like. I think he learned on like a 182 or something like that. 172. But then. Yeah, got a Baron. And he'd fly back and forth because he was working. He would work. Working elsewhere. So driving. He'd fly the airplane. Of course, if you have one, why not?
- [99:21]
B
Yeah.
- [99:22]
A
And there was a little. In the town we'd be in, there was a little airport. Nothing going on there. I mean, a few hangars, maybe a plane in and out. Like, I mean, a few a week, if that. And just guys messing around. It wasn't really people coming and going, but when he would almost. When he needed to get picked up, it was about maybe 10 minutes up to the airport. It was up top from town. He would just buzz the house, and so you just. You'd hear. You'd just be hanging out outside, and then you just hear. He would just go. So just almost hitting the treetops, like. Yeah, all right. And you go get in the car, go up to the airport, pick him up. Yeah. While he's winding everything down. But, yeah, that was quite a fun. I flew around in that quite a bit. They're opening quite a bit because I get air sick. Like.
- [100:14]
B
Well, those are still really good airplanes. But it's a tool. It's a very valuable tool.
- [100:23]
A
Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting because, like, what you had to probably drive out to go see, like, there were problems. You probably spent like 30 minutes on. You just needed to be there.
- [100:34]
B
Need to be there.
- [100:34]
A
Oh, okay. I know exactly what's going on here at 1, 2, 3.
- [100:37]
B
Right.
- [100:37]
A
Whereas now a lot of that, like you said, you can do remotely.
- [100:41]
B
Yeah. Right now I can pull it up on the screen and look live at the problem. And almost all our jobs now, we've got live cameras. We got live stream cameras that run all the time. Yeah, it's pretty Cool.
- [100:54]
A
Well, I Glad I was able to catch you for a little bit here.
- [100:59]
B
Well, we've been wanting to do this. I've really wanted to do it, but time goes by so fast at your age and so many of your wonderful employees. And I mean that sincerely. I'm not saying it to Pat Billwood on the back. You got incredible staff who are very, very sensitive to the. At least in our company, I'm sure they do the same with all of them coming out and getting to know us and understand us and very respectful of our culture, and they get to know us. And then when you did our website, you did so many other things for us. It's just been a real great tool and great partnership. So I congratulate you on the work you're doing and all the. Where the energy comes from. I have no idea. But then I never knew when I was your age because I was doing the same thing.
- [101:50]
A
Yeah.
- [101:52]
B
And, you know, probably hard to live with 44 years. My wife would surely tell you that civil engineers are not easy to live with.
- [102:03]
A
No.
- [102:04]
B
Number one, we know everything.
- [102:05]
A
Well, there's a reason why everything. Yeah. Yeah.
- [102:09]
B
And. But, you know, I guess we have some advantage.
- [102:13]
A
Sure. Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. No, like you were saying, I don't kind of just look around our company and wonder daily, like, why are all these people here? What am I doing here? Why? What the heck's going on?
- [102:25]
B
I believe God gave you a purpose and you gave you incredible energy and talents and entrepreneurship that where if it was the excitement about doing something is really all you need. Yeah. You know, when you had that, you don't. Yeah. You got to worry a little bit about the money, but just pursue that and pursue it well and pursue it hard and give it everything you got. And. Yeah, you may not get as much sleep, but you. You. You don't have any regrets. You never left anything on the table. You never wish you'd worked, you know, less or more. Family, business, it goes together. I'm a big believer in, especially in our industry. And this may go for all. Anybody in construction, you can't do it without family.
- [103:17]
A
Yeah.
- [103:17]
B
I mean, or really, really close friends or whether you have a spouse or you don't have a spouse. You need family support, what you do, and when you do that, you do it. You're kind of doing it together. But there is no. There is no really a dividing line. There's. I've heard about life, work, balances. Well, yes, there's a balance, but there's never a time that the Two aren't intertwined. Our business work is family, and family is work. I think it's one of the things that's really glued all of our employees and our families because to me, everybody's a Scott. Everybody's. Their last name is Scott. Hopefully we treat them like that every day. None of us perfect. We're all. We're all have plenty of shortcomings, so we. It's just fun to, you know, do all this together and then. But it just goes by so fast.
- [104:15]
A
Yeah.
- [104:16]
B
You're. You're 30. Enjoy.
- [104:18]
A
I know.
- [104:20]
B
Enjoy. And. And it sure seems like all those that have come alongside you, I think they're probably attracted to the fact that you love it and they love it too, and that shows.
- [104:33]
A
Yeah, if I didn't love it, I would have given up like day three. I think you have to love it to endure it, because it's just a lot of days and weeks and months.
- [104:43]
B
If you don't love it, just God's got something else for you. There's something else out there for you.
- [104:48]
A
Sure.
- [104:49]
B
Maybe you don't. Maybe you stump your toe at two or three times. Yeah. You know the guy I went to work for because again, my father wouldn't. Didn't let me come to Auburn the first year I went to Tech. He didn't let me come work for the company after I graduated. He said. He didn't tell me until my last break between my last quarter at Tech. He said, well, I was out in the wood workshop. I like to do woodwork. And he said, well, have you interviewed any where. I looked at my dad and I said, what do you mean? I just thought I was going back out in the field on a rich job. He said, nah, you need to work for somebody else. I went to work for John Harvard, Harvard International in Birmingham. And that was four years of just the greatest experience. So when I came back, I wasn't just dating's boy coming out of college out there in the field. Even though I'd worked there some of the summers, I just. It just did a lot for me to get other experiences with other companies still in construction, but. Very blessed. Very blessed.
- [105:53]
A
Well, I appreciate your time today. Thanks for sitting down and talking bridges.
- [106:00]
B
I loved it.
- [106:01]
A
Yeah.
- [106:02]
B
Come back again.
- [106:02]
A
Yeah, we'll do.
- [106:03]
B
Maybe I'll make it to Nashville. I'm planning to come up in August.
- [106:06]
A
That'd be great.
- [106:06]
B
Yeah, maybe I'll get to see you then.
- [106:08]
A
Yeah, we'd love that. Yeah. Yeah, let us know.
- [106:10]
B
Very good.