My granddad came to central Florida from Havana in 1962. First real job he got was running a D6 on a phosphate strip mine in Polk County. He ran heavy equipment for forty-one years — citrus groves, strip malls on Dale Mabry, the early subdivisions out in Brandon before Brandon was anything. Died in 2004 still talking about the hydraulic pumps on the new machines like they were magic.
My dad took over the seat in the 80s. He ran a fleet for a commercial excavator in Miami for twenty years before coming back to Tampa and working for one of the big development firms. I grew up in the cab of his truck on Saturday mornings, watching him dig foundations for strip malls and apartment buildings. I was on a skid steer by the time I was sixteen.
I started Bedrock in 2008 — right in the teeth of the recession. Everyone told me I was crazy. I bought one used Cat 314 at an auction in Lakeland for $42,000, a Ford F-550 with 180,000 miles on it, and rented a corner of a lot on East Hillsborough Avenue for $400 a month. I worked alone for the first year and slept in the truck on the long jobs.
Seventeen years later we've got twelve machines owned outright, six full-time operators, two mechanics, and a dispatcher named Marta who keeps us on schedule. We've done work for every major builder in Hillsborough County and most of them in Pinellas. We've built things we're proud of and we've walked away from bids that would've cost us our reputation. Reputation in this business is everything.
The promise is simple: every job over $15,000 I'm on the seat of the lead machine. The other jobs, I've got operators I trust — guys who've been with me eight to twelve years — and I'm available on the phone. We bid in lump sums because T&M is a game that ends badly for someone. We pull our own permits because depending on a sub means missing a schedule. And we clean the site to grade because the next crew in is another builder we want to work for again.
OWNER / OPERATOR