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About Hilvers Construction
Nick and Sheila Hilvers moved to the San Joaquin Valley 25 years ago and went into the dairy construction business, forming Hilvers Construction six years later. Today Hilvers Construction is a family run operation with all three of Nick and Sheila’s sons sharing in ownership and responsibility. Nick Sr. assists all three sons in running the construction business Nick Jr. builds the milk barns, Jeff runs the fabrication shop where he fabricates the loops for the freestall and builds the cement water troughs. Hundreds of water troughs per month are fabricated and sent to dairies and new construction sites all over the west. Chad runs the paving business, while Sheila manages the office, which includes billing, payroll and purchasing all the materials needed to complete each job.
Truckloads of pipe and steel, tons of sand and cement, are just a small part of the materials needed to build a single project. The company has grown because of the quality work and service they have provided to hundreds of dairies over the years. When Charlie Vander Kooi decided it was time to build, he chose Hilvers. “I had looked at a number of carousel barns, I had seen the job they did at John Verwey’s Dairy and knew Nick Hilvers did the construction on that project. It’s a great dairy, they did a great job. Nick has a very good reputation for doing a great job every time.” John Verwey had this to say about his experience with Hilvers Construction: Nick is great to work with. From the beginning, I knew I wanted him to build my dairy. He was able to understand the vision I had of how I wanted my dairy to look. It took longer to get he permit than it took to build the facility. Now lots of people visit my dairy and I highly recommend Nick Hilvers. He built it, he needs to get the credit. It’s nice to get a contractor that has everything on hand. His son Jeff fabricated the loops and troughs, Chad handled the paving and Nick Jr. coordinated the milk barn, and then worked as a team to get the job done. Nick’s sons are sharp, respected and hard working; just like their dad.” Nick says, “Our business is about lots of coordination with people . Getting people working together and being flexible. With all the different people and skills that are incorporated into building a dairy facility; the architect, the electricians, the milking equipment, the dirt movers, grading, engineers, the concrete companies, the plumbers; Timing and coordination is everything.” The company is now twenty-two employees strong and continues to grow and adapt to the ever-changing needs of the dairy construction industry.
The biggest change that Hilvers Construction faces is the ability to get concrete when needed. Dairies are built in the country, long distances from the batching plants, sometimes hours away; combined with the demand for concrete from the housing market in the valley, sometimes the only time they can get concrete is at or very early in the mornings. Concrete is ordered, as much as 10 days in advance to ensure that it will be there when they need it. A single project can consume as much as 40,000 yards of concrete to complete a job. Chad’s paving machines can handle as much as 150 yards per hour, thus the importance of getting that much concrete delivered when we need it.
But in the end it all gets done. The transition from a vacant site to completion is something to see. The normal time period for completing a dairy from start to finish is about eleven months. It’s amazing how the dairy construction business has evolved. We used to have deliveries at the job site from 10 trucks a day, now we deal with a hundred trucks per day,” said Hilvers. We take pride in the work we do and we enjoy it. Family is important to us and being able to work with my sons is an added benefit to our company.
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