Northwest Infrastructure

Owner:  Michael Martin

Building a company from the ground up requires skills — and tenacity:

Portland, OR — His father was a long-haul trucker, so it was not surprising that Michael Martin found himself surrounded by heavy duty trucks. But there was a change. This time, Martin wasn’t driving other people’s trucks; other people were driving his trucks.

That transition did not take place overnight; it took many years of saving, investing and building.

Martin stood in an industrial size garage area next to one of his massive dump trucks. The 10 foot high cab would have dwarfed the Trail Blazers’ tallest centers. Another equally impressive truck sat nearby. Six more rested in the back parking lot. A few others were on the job around Portland.

This fleet did not just drop into his lap. So how does a regular guy go from stepping out of high school and owning 10 trucks, excavators and other miscellaneous equipment?

It started with a job – several jobs, actually. “It went from roofing and remodeling to this,” he says modestly.

Well, there were a few other details. You should factor in the instruction he received from West Coast Training, a heavy equipment training company located in Woodland, WA, just downstream from Portland.

Then there’s the matter of keeping an eye on future gains — and not being seduced by immediate gratification.

“I always invest to put back into the company,” Martin says. “We don’t have a big house or a nice car. Rather than spending money, I like to make money.”

As his experience and skills grew, Martin went to work for contractors. Not one to sit on his hands, Martin was busy getting his own general contractor’s license at the same time.

As a subcontractor, Martin kept a close eye on every detail to register  success on each job and to keep each job on budget.

As he moved on to becoming a primary contractor, Martin adhered to the principles that had gotten him this far.

“At first I hired everything out,” he recalls, but Martin continued to focus on “finding the right people to work for me and making profits on jobs.”

Early on, Martin deduced that being “green” could also be profitable. Today, he notes that on demolition jobs, “We always salvage material.” When working on one of his  contracts,  a demolition job for the Miracles Club on  Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, everything salvageable was recycled.

Surviving the recession

In boom times, there are jobs for everyone in Northwest Infrastructure’s industry. In leaner times, only the select few contractors will find themselves fully employed.

Martin observes the two factors that win contracts. “Low bid is what most people go with,” he says, “Or the quality of your work.”

For that reason, he says, “We stick with (sub) contractors we know.”

“You have to be tenacious if you want to succeed,” he says.

So far, Martin has not had to take jobs more than two hours’ drive time from Portland. But, as the economy gets tighter, he realizes, “You have to go where the work is at.”

In one his current contracts — an excavating project near a maintenance building for the street car — Martin stands out for his knowledge of performing differing job site functions.

In addition to the excavating, he says, “Northwest Infrastructure will put in the pipes for sewer and water.”

Even as he works on multiple jobs today, he is already scouting his next contracts. “I’m getting a lot of my work (from listings) I find on-line,” Martin says.

“It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep.”

One of the drawbacks of the contracting business is the need to pay lots of bills up front, while also having to wait for the check for your own services until the job is completed.

In one of these cash flow disconnects, Martin found himself in a temporary pinch. “Someone mentioned (Terry Brandt at Albina Opportunities Corporation) for a loan for cash flow,” he recalls. With that loan, Martin’s trucks kept rolling.

So how does it feel to be on top your game?

Success sometimes has its own drawbacks, Martin finds. “The bigger the target, the more people shoot at you.”

For more information about Albina Opportunities Corporation,
call Terry Brandt at (503) 227-3950.