Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1916-12-08
Paving Contractor
Plans Winter Work
Makes Season of FroSts and
Shows Profitable by Office
Efficiency

oAkVNES EEOhAtaDaG ~ AAA1
Efficiency
"I Certainly envy the highway con-
tractor in winter" remarked the editor
of the Contractors Atlas the other day
TO a friend who makes his living by
constructing pavements. mo mill
ionaire has anything on you from De-
cember / to the ides of March. All
you do is to figure out your profits for
the y. and run away to Palm Beach
or some other summary cline to spend
your i~ll-gotten gains. That is the life!"
"Don't you believe it," retorted the
contractor: "and if you really would
like to know how l spend my winters
I'll tell you"
And as this contractors plan for
making the winter profitable is n that
might well be folio wed by many others,
it has been passed along. and here 1t is
In the contractors own words:
rYou know | take work anywhere
within a radius of 200 miles. Begin
ming about the first of October, | rave
my stenographer start a little clipping
bureau. She reads all the engineering
and contracting publications and as
many daily and weekly newspapers as
we get, and from them she clips all
references to city, town or county high
way bond issues or plans for road or
pavement construction. Then about
the middle of November, when | rave
cleaned up my years work, / begin to
study these clippings. About the first
of December l pack my bag, not for
getting a box of good cigars, and start.
When | land in a town 1 make the
acquaintance of every n who has
anything to do with highways-and
believe me, / am a real highway
booster. / go after them from every
angle and can often render real as
sistance.
"Maybe the town has no engineer
and does not intend to hire u until
they know what they are going to do.
So I give them the benefit of my
PI8CtlChi CA DCllCuCC. O5biOiJ OaO
committee on streets had figured on a
type Of construction on which no con-
tractor would be required, doing the
work by day labor. Then | get busy
and talk them into a plan where they
will fF4aiIy need me. And all the
time l am getting acquainted with
them and they with me.
"Of course l am home for Christmas
and New YEARS., but after the holidays
4 am away again until the middle of
February.
After that the seeds l have sown be-
gin to return a harvest in the form of
requests for bids on contracts. or
course, you will say that l would get
many of them anyway. Right. But
don't foSgat ttnat by NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.
Ill the men who are really letting the
contracts. and if they are giving out
any favors or preferences in the bid
ding it's their old friend whose cigars
they smoked in December and January
" no Is going to get them. That's hui
man nature. 1 have been doing this
for several years, and l find my works
pays big.
4.Some of my friends spend their
winter months on southern contracts,
but I can't see them because you have
to start work on them before your
northern jobs are done, and generally
you are still working down there when
you ought to be looking after new
work in the North. So l stick to my
natural territory and work it twelve
months in the year. If you don't
think it pays, ask Dun or Bradstreet
to tell you how We grow each year."
Public Ledger.
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