MEMBER PROFILE – CONTRACTOR
GULF EQUIPMENT CORPORATION
Alabama’s big little company
By Jim Chliboyko
One of the newer members of the Pile Driving Contractors
Association isn’t necessarily a brand new company, though
it is to PDCA, and relatively new to driving piles, as well.
In fact, Alabama’s Gulf Equipment Corporation got its start 31
years ago in the telecommunications sector. Gulf ’s founder is still its
current president, L.W. (Woodie) Ramsay, Jr. His company began
life by constructing telecom towers back in the 1980s, and his crew
has continued to develop the company from that very specific starting
point.
Based in the town of Theodore, Ala., part of greater Mobile,
today Gulf boasts both wireless telecom and civil infrastructure divisions.
But if you think 1984 sounds early to be building what are now
thought of as primarily cell phone towers, you’d be correct.
“Woodie had a vision to see where the telecommunications
industry was going,” said John McLaughlin, Gulf ’s field operations
manager in their civil infrastructure division.
“We promote ourselves as being a ‘big little company.’ Whichever
hat we need to wear that day is the one we wear,” said McLaughlin,
which is maybe how Gulf Equipment Corporation was able to nimbly
turn their attention towards bridges and highways.
“The company made a call about three years ago to jump into
the bridge-building business,” he said. “There are some substandard
bridges in the area, and funding was coming available. We’re mainly
focusing on site work, DOT construction and underground utilities.
We do all our own piling, we don’t sub any of it out. We drive our
own piling, pour our own concrete.”
The company concentrates on a very specific area.
“Our main area is the I-10 corridor,” said McLaughlin. “We
work to the Louisiana line to Fort Walton, following the I-10 corridor.”
He estimates that the civil side of their operation averages about
$25 to $30 million of work a year, and employs at any given time
between 55 and 80 people.
Still, deciding to branch off into such a heavy-duty, hardwareintensive
sector must not have been the easiest decision to make. But
if you’re going to get into bridge building, it might as well be in the
Cityscape view of downtown Mobile, Ala.
Fotoluminate LLC/Shutterstock.com
PILEDRIVER | 73
/Shutterstock.com
