Rock Hard Solutions: Pioneers in Construction Innovation

I imagine many of you reading this are the same. Several years ago, when it became apparent that our contracting firm needed a website, we hired a developer and I basically phoned it in, quite frankly because our business gets zero customers from the internet! It’s a nice site and it suits our needs. When I came up with the idea for Rock Hard Solutions, I quickly realized I wasn’t going to be able to phone this one in, as the business model will depend heavily on the internet. So, instead of hiring a developer, my wife and I found a partner who has taken it as a personal challenge to create an amazing site. Here’s the problem. She said “Scott, you have to tell your story!”. Well, upon significant reflection, I realized that’s quite a long story that started when I was just ten years old. So here it goes.

In 1982 my father was faced with a decision as the company he worked for decided to close their doors. He could have gone to work for anyone, but an old mentor he had met along his journey convinced him to strike out on his own. The business he started, and more importantly, the team he created is called T&C Contracting, and it is still in business today. I literally started in the shop sweeping floors at ten, not because Dad made me, quite the opposite. He couldn’t keep me away from the big toys! I was in love with iron, particularly yellow iron. When I would slip away unnoticed from my tasks, he would always find me on whatever machine was parked out back awaiting service. He even tried sticking a shovel in my hand during my teenage years, but again, I always found my way into a seat instead. In the summer of my sixteenth year, Dad sent me 150 miles from home to run a dozer pulling a bog disk on the largest dirt job he had tackled to date. It was 1986, and I hated pulling that disk. So boring. Again, every time he left, I found my way onto bigger machines, this time an old 631C wide nose scraper. He didn’t like me running that machine, saying it was too dangerous, but every time he moved me back to the disk, as soon as he left, me and this old operator, who loved the disk, would trade back. Finally, I guess I really got too good on the old pan, because he stopped making me trade back when he caught us. I spent the next summer on a 972 Liebherr loading trucks on a large marina project that today is one of the crown jewels of the river scene in Louisville. Little did I know at the time that my days as an operator were numbered. Pretty soon, I went to college, but I didn’t stop working. I traded levers for a pickup truck, a pencil, and a cell phone (also new tech at that time). While I was in school and supposedly learning the skills necessary to take over the business one day, I never lost my desire to be on or around heavy equipment. Every morning, I went to my job managing a landfill to get my crew started then go to class. After classes were over, I went back to the plant and wrapped up the day, often jumping on a dozer to help the other operators close up for the night. Operating heavy equipment was my favorite thing, period.

After college, of course, I became more involved with the business side of things, but I still loved that iron. Since I couldn't really operate anymore, I focused on finding better, more efficient equipment to improve our processes. This is when I really learned to open my eyes and not discount any “new-fangled” machinery until you try it. If you are old enough to remember the old DJB articulated trucks, you probably remember your first reaction upon seeing it. It looked like a scraper and a dump truck had a baby. I can’t write my reaction here, but those old trucks have evolved into the six-wheel drive articulated monsters that many of us have used with great success over the last twenty years. This, consequently, was the same reaction I had when I saw my first Kemroc chain cutter, but more on that in a minute.

As my career evolved, I ran into so many interesting projects that presented challenges that must be met. I learned how to meet these challenges from my dad. My father was a pioneer in our region at leveraging new technology. He had the very first GPS enabled dozer in Louisville, long before a company called Trimble popped up on the scene. It wasn’t fancy, it could not cut a slope, and it certainly didn’t have automated control, but it showed the operator a plan view, and a cut or fill at a specific point. It was amazing! Dad kept up with technology as it matured and he always told me to stay on the cutting edge, even if I had to take on debt to do it. He was not wrong. This is exactly how Rock Hard Solutions came to be!