Page 25 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

Together we can do what we couldn’t do alone
DeSilva has used Peterson field service decade after decade.
“They were very committed to Oliver because they’d started with him, hauling sand from Crown Beach in Alameda to Piedmont—literally with shovels, wheelbarrows, and an old pickup. Half of them worked for me at one point.” As Ed got the company back on its feet financially, he started forming relationships with local builders, which even-
tually led to one of DeSilva’s mainstays: the residential market.
But what really grew ODS was the move into the public works arena in the early 1980s. “Our first real big project was building both approaches for the current Dumbarton Bridge,” says Gates, who hired on in 1976 as a junior engineer. “We beat Kiewit by $200,000 on the $10.5 million job. That’s what really put us on the map.” Ownership in nearby Dumbarton Quarry allowed them to deliver several million tons of fill for the project. “We made millions on that job. It was a tremendously successful job for us.”
ODS landed most of the development work in the surrounding area and also caught the eye of Prudential Insurance, who was just gearing up to develop Hacienda Business Park in Pleasanton, CA. “We negotiated that deal at the Pleasanton Hotel on a Thursday night in 1983,” recounts Gates. “The next day, we had twenty pieces of equipment on the job. It was all for show. The city was going to turn the project down, and the devel- oper wanted equipment out there to show intent. We pirated everything we could and had it moving in at 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning. We didn’t have a contract. There wasn’t even a design yet. But our scrapers were out there, running around, ready to go.” In one night, DeSilva locked in eighteen months and $86 million worth of work before anyone else had more than a whiff of the job.
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