Greg Huylar was born and raised on the Yakima Indian reservation. His father was a cattle rancher, tending up to 350 head, and Greg spent the better part of his youth on horseback working cattle in the mountains of Washington state.
Despite studying agriculture in college, Greg didn’t want to spend the rest of his life on the farm. “The best thing about college was I met Jodee,” says Greg about his future wife. Jodee’s father had a successful crane company, and Greg went to work for it, painting cranes and welding, whatever he could do to be useful.
But Greg didn’t see himself sitting in a crane 10 to 12 hours a day either. He wanted more action and to see what he could do on his own, so in 1988 he bought an older Cat 416 backhoe. “It was one of their first models – ROPS, no cab,” says Greg, “I had to tow it with my pickup truck.”
With that, he and Jodee started building a construction company. They later acquired a well-used 1972 Kenworth truck and another employee. Tri-Valley Construction started to show potential, but Greg and Jodee realized they had to do more. “We either had to get bigger or go out of business,” Jodee says. “So we decided to bid bigger work.”
Since those early days, Tri-Valley’s equipment and trailering portfolio has improved considerably. Today the company has seven trucks and dumps, as well as three-axle tilt decks, a lowboy and a hydraulic beavertail trailer. Greg says he can get three pieces of equipment on the beavertail, which makes it ideal for out-of-town jobs.
