A Salute to a Komatsu Customer
Unexpected events lead contractor to found and expand Albuquerque-based PG Enterprises LLC
W Payam Ghoreishi, owner
What started as a short-term break from college to help out at his family's dairy farm, turned into a concrete recycling and asphalt business for Payam Ghoreishi, owner of Albuquerque-based PG Enterprises LLC. When Ghoreishi returned to the family farm in 1998, he had no idea it would lead to starting his own business.
“I was going to school and came home because my brother, who was running the farm, decided he wanted to do something else,” recalled Ghoreishi. “I took over, but after a few months he came back. The two of us oversaw the dairy together for a while, but my intention was to return to Texas Tech.” Even though the move was meant to be temporary, Ghoreishi was committed to maintaining the farm’s success and actively worked to expand it. When another dairy operation in Albuquerque closed, Ghoreishi purchased its stanchions, corral pieces and other items, and dismantled them for reuse.
A PG Enterprises operator hammers rock recycle with a Komatsu PC138USLC excavator equipped with a hammer. “Across the board, the durability and longevity we get from our Komatsu equipment is incredible, especially the machines that we put in harsh applications,” said Payam Ghoreishi, owner of PG Enterprises. “We have put up to 15,000 hours on them without experiencing any major issues.”
“As I was taking things apart, I met the person who owned the dairy property and planned for redevelopment,” Ghoreishi explained. “He asked me if I was interested in dismantling his properties for him and getting paid for it. At first, I didn’t take him seriously, but he asked again a few days later, and that got me to consider it.” Ghoreishi visited one site in El Paso, Texas. In addition to dairy-related items, the job included concrete removal, and that sparked an idea.
“Honestly, I still wasn’t that interested because I wanted to go back to school, but as a courtesy I met with his representative,” said Ghoreishi. “I figured the concrete would get hauled to the landfill, but the question of crushing came up. I had been to Germany and saw that contractors there recycled practically everything, and I believed the best move would be to bring in a mobile unit and crush on-site.
“I put a proposal together that included doing that with the idea that the resulting material would stay there and be sold with the property — turn the liability into an asset, so to speak,” Ghoreishi continued. “The owner liked the idea. In fact, he asked me who was going to explain to my parents that I wasn’t going back to school.”
Adding services, learning lessons
Close to 25 years after Ghoreishi did his first job, he is still recycling concrete and has added asphalt. Old pavements and foundations come from locations where PG Enterprises’ dirt crews are performing demolition as part of sitework services that include clearing and grubbing, mass excavation, and fine grading. Truck drivers for PG Enterprises deliver concrete and asphalt to the company’s recycle yard on the southeast side of Albuquerque, which also houses its headquarters.
In addition to the crushing yard, PG Enterprises has a sand and gravel operation near Belen, N.M., that opened in 1999 and produces about 30 products, ranging from fine sand to boulders, and a landscape-related pit near Albuquerque that mainly sells raw products to wholesalers. Specialty items include high-quality golf course sand and infield mixes for baseball fields.
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PG Enterprises now also offers heavy haul trucking, but mobile crushing remains on its list of services.
