Management
loyal customers but the next generation is coming along. “I’m working to generate the same reputation with the younger customers that my father had with the older customers and that my grandfather had with his customers,” she says. “My grandfather knew all the people around here and that helped get us our reputation. He’d bring coffee to people watching us on the job and bring donuts to kids on the jobsite. He really made an effort to make the customer feel like part of our family. It’s important our customers know there’s another Vertucci ready to step in to continue our work. It’s important they know who I am.” And one of the sales points she can make is that her 63-year-old company is operating on the cutting edge. “One of the things we can tell them is that we’re up to date and even ahead of the game with new technologies that will
enable us to provide the same quality service and family-oriented service the company provided in the past,” she says. “They seem to like that we’re updating our systems and our equipment.”
A Mix of Old and New “My father hates technology but I love it,” Vertucci says. “Everything we did we used to do by hand, from the office to the field it was a very labor-intensive process. Now that we’ve brought in technology it’s all easier and we can be more productive and more profitable.” That’s what her generation has brought to the company. “Since I came in we have a nice mix of both the old way and the new way,” she says. Terry, for example, still likes to grade using a tractor outfitted with a blade that his father had custom-made for the company. But at the end of
2018 Gabriel Contractors bought a new grading attachment for their skid steer “and it’s about as automatic as you can get.” And her father is adjusting just fine. “Like anyone else he goes backwards here and there because the old way is more comfortable, but once he gets a handle on how to do things using the technology we’ve brought in he catches on pretty quickly – then that becomes the norm. Every company this size and just about all people his age are going to have trouble transitioning to something like this, but it’s really happened pretty easily,” she says. “He’s flat-out told me that if I hadn’t brought this technology in we wouldn’t be in business anymore. It’s a completely different landscape nowadays and in his world he would have closed up shop a long time ago.”
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