HERBERT F. DARLING INC.
Committed to the pile
driving industry
By Lisa Kopochinski
If you ask Buck Darling of Herbert F. Darling Inc. (HFD Inc.)
what he likes most about the pile driving industry, he’ll tell you
it’s the ability to travel and meet all kinds of new people who do
all kinds of great things.
“I get to go into facilities that few people get to go into and see
what they do and how they do it. Places like steel plants, auto manufacturing
plants and power plants – coal, nuclear and hydro,” he said.
“Geology has always been an interest. From Southern New York to
Northern New York, there are drastic differences in the types of rock
and the way you drive piles around them.”
And Darling ought to know. Pile driving is in his blood. His
grandfather, Herbert F. Darling Sr., formed the company more than
70 years ago in Williamsville, N.Y. The office has remained at the
same location – 131 California Drive – all of this time and still
retains the original phone number.
Specializing in driven deep foundations of all types in New
York and Pennsylvania (H-piles, pipe piles, timber piles), along with
braced-shoring systems and cofferdams primarily consisting of sheet
piling or soldiers and lagging, HFD Inc. also performs minor rock
MEMBER PROFILE – CONTRACTOR
and soil anchor work. The company has been heavily involved in the
environmental remediation of hazardous waste sites, mostly through
the installation of sheet pile barrier walls, earth-filled circular cofferdams,
bearing piles for treatment buildings or utility trench shoring
for leachate collection systems.
While the company has remained remarkably unchanged over
seven decades in terms of its size (16 full-time employees in the
office and shop; and 35 to 50 operators, pile drivers, laborers and
teamsters during peak times) none of the Darlings (Sr., Jr. and Buck,
who is III) nor the current co-owner (Thomas R. Weaver, Darling’s
brother-in-law) ever planned to grow HFD Inc. into a multi-billion
dollar corporation.
“The vision was to remain a closely held family corporation that
would exist to serve the construction community, our local communities
and, most importantly, our co-workers,” said Buck, the current
president. Darling is also vice president of DarDrill, Inc. (which was
formed in 2006 to assist in maintaining and growing the company’s
own work and market share). Weaver is vice president of HFD Inc.
and president of DarDrill.
Some of HFD Inc.’s staff. Herb Darling Jr. (now
retired) is third from the left in the back row.
Vice president and co-owner Tom Weaver is
second from the right in the back row.
Photos courtesy of Herbert F. Darling Inc.
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