The Steel Erector's Playbook

Issue #5

The half-gone clutch on the hill

I was 15. No license. Saturday. My dad had brought me to work with him, and on the way home we pulled up to a stop sign in his beat-up work truck — the one with the clutch already half gone.

He stopped the truck, looked at me, and said, “Okay. You're going to drive this home.”

I'd never driven stick in my life. We were on a hill. And right then, a car pulled up behind us.

I was shaking so bad I could barely hold the wheel. He didn't have a care in the world.

First attempt — the truck bucked, stalled, and I slammed the brakes. I begged him to take over. He said no. Second attempt — feather the gas, ease off the brake — bucked and stalled again. I begged again. He still wouldn't switch seats. “I know you can do this.”

Third attempt, the truck started rolling. He yelled “more gas,” it lurched forward, I panicked and hit the brakes one more time — but I'd done it. I got it off the line and away from that stop sign. The car behind us finally went around.

“I told you you could do it.”

I was done after that and made him take over. But I never forgot it.

What my dad was really doing

My dad's number one rule for my brother and me was simple — don't come to me until you've tried it first.

Try every idea you've got. Use every resource you can find. Exhaust your own effort. And only then, if you still couldn't crack it, could you come ask him.

He wasn't being cold. He was training us. He knew that if he gave us the answer every time, we'd never learn to find it ourselves. So he made us learn the hard way — on purpose. The clutch on the hill was just one of a hundred versions of the same lesson.

That's the part that built everything I do now.

Why this matters for your business

Here's the thing nobody tells you when you go from ironworker to owner.

The trade teaches you the work. The apprenticeship, the journeymen, the years in the field — they teach you how to rig, how to bolt, how to read iron. That part, you've got.

But the day you sign your name on the dotted line as an owner, somebody drops you on a hill in a truck with a half-gone clutch and a car pulls up behind you. The contract you don't fully understand. The GC sitting on your money. The job that's bleeding and you can't figure out where. The bid you should've walked away from.

Nobody gives you practice reps for that. There's no apprenticeship for the business side. You're in the driver's seat, shaking, and the only way out is through.

That's the whole game. When a problem hits that you've never seen before — and in this business, one hits every week — you don't freeze. You don't wait for someone to take the wheel. You try every idea, use every resource, and you figure it out. Then next time, it's not new anymore.

That's what my dad drilled into me at a stop sign 30+ years ago. It's the reason I can handle the adversity this business throws at us daily. Not because I'm smarter than the next guy. Because I learned young that the answer was always mine to find.

One more thing

My dad's still here. But he has dementia now, and the man who taught me all of this is harder to reach than he used to be.

So if your old man — or your old foreman, or whoever brought you into this trade — is still around, don't wait. Ask him the things you never asked. How he priced a job he wasn't sure about. The worst contract he ever signed and what it taught him. The job that nearly broke him. The stuff that matters doesn't get written down anywhere. It only lives in the people who lived it.

Call him this weekend. Trust me on this one.

— Dino

The Steel Erector's Playbook — one field-tested system per week to protect profit, reduce chaos, and build a business that runs without you.

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