Tanner is the fourth generation of his family to work in grading, as his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his father all operated their own grading businesses.
“I’ve been going to work in the summers laboring for my grandpa and my dad since I was nine or ten years old. This is all I’ve ever done.”
Even though he got started in the industry at such an early age, Tanner didn’t know that he wanted to follow the previous generations of his family into the grading business until he was a teenager.
“Once I operated equipment, and wasn’t laboring much anymore, I decided this was what I wanted to do.”
When Tanner first graduated from high school, he traveled from Southern California all the way to Colorado to take a job running scrapers in the oil fields.
“Honestly, working in the oilfield sucked. The hours were so long. We would work seven days a week for 12 hours a day. Obviously, the money’s there if you want to work that much, but you don’t have a life. You’re there to work, and that’s it. We would work for a month straight, and then we would get a week off, and I would fly home for that week.”
When he returned to California, Tanner worked primarily in the Riverside area, doing grading work for Sims Grading and an equipment rental company. Two years ago, he took a job with LB3 Enterprises, and his career took off.
“The biggest difference between LB3 and the other companies I’ve worked with since coming back from Colorado is the consistency. It’s every day for LB3. If you’re one of their top guys, they keep you busy every single day. Some of these jobs go on for years. With the smaller companies, if you’re doing a custom house pad, when you finish, there’s not always a job to go to next.”
Tanner loves grading so much that he now runs his own side business on the weekends ― five days a week just wasn’t enough for him.
“I work for LB3 during the week, and on the weekends, I’ll do my own thing. I own a skid steer, which I mostly use to do backyard stuff. Little pads that need to be graded, dirt roads, miscellaneous stuff for homeowners. My life revolves around it.”
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