Jason Kilgore's humble roots provided the foundation for his success.
First, he built his own asphalt paving business from one truck and a lot of credit-card debt to a fleet of 100 trucks and nearly 150 employees.
Then, rather than rest on his successes, Kilgore became part of a major reorganization of several gravel, paving, contracting and concrete companies into Kilgore Companies, a major player in projects in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho.
Kilgore's career in asphalt started when he was 14, with a job at Staker Paving. At 17, he was a foreman for the company and, as a college senior, he was estimating projects.
That's when the company was sold, and its new owners offered Kilgore a good job managing their paving divisions "back East."
Instead, he stayed at home and started Kilgore Paving, moving from asphalt maintenance into paving and ever-more-ambitiously scaled projects.
In 2010, Kilgore Paving became the acquisition target of a national building materials and aggregate company. The newly formed entity combined the assets of Harper Contracting, Harper Sand and Gravel, Harper Excavation and Harper Ready Mix, plus Kilgore Paving. The new firm, with Kilgore at its helm, is now known as Kilgore Companies and also has acquired Altaview Concrete and Triple C Concrete in Idaho.
These acquisitions, along with its existing assets, have helped Kilgore position his new firm to conduct operations of all sizes, from repairing the asphalt of one street to major highway construction. The expanded company provides not only paving, grading and asphalt production, but also ready-mix concrete production, heavy highway construction, MSE walls, utilities, mass earthwork and structural earthwork services.