MY FIRST BILLION DOLLAR CONTRACT

A TRUE PERSONAL STORY

Photo by Mateusz Kędzierski on Unsplash

MY FIRST BILLION DOLLAR GOVERNMENT CONTRACT

One afternoon, my friend Doug and I found ourselves in my college dorm room in a deep existential discussion about money. To be more specific, being the poverty level students that we were, how could we make some decent money? After a long discussion about the various tempting minimum wage possibilities, Doug mentioned that he heard somewhere, that one could make good money by building or repairing trails for parks. That actually sounded kind of interesting. Since we had no other options that really rocked our boat, we decided to look into this trail idea, although honestly, it sounded a bit dubious.

Being the brilliant college students that we were, we undertook some deep deep research on the building and maintenance of trails. We found out that the government did award contracts for such work. That there was indeed some good money to be made. Maybe even more than $1.75 an hour. Apparently, the US Forest Service, as well as various state and county agencies, had trails to build and others that needed maintenance. We also learned that the construction of trails oftentimes required the use of explosives, which although it sounded exciting, left us a bit high and dry. Even though our experience with explosives was quite extensive, it was limited to firecrackers.

As we dug even deeper, we found where the potential trail contracts were listed in the newspapers. We now knew that trail ‘building’ was out of the question (as we were not licensed for explosives and we would likely blow our toes off), but trail ‘maintenance’ still had potential. We finally found one that we, in our highly evolved level of analysis, considered to be an out-of-sight possibility. They would be awarding the contract in the next couple weeks (perfect for summer work), and it wasn’t too large of an undertaking, just shy of a mile of trail repair. Doug and I looked at each other with knowing looks in our eyes, “This is it man! We’re going to make a truckload of money!!” Even though we considered ourselves diehard anti-capitalists, we had to admit we were both getting a little excited. We were going to be the best anti-capitalist capitalists ever!! Billions coming our way.

We knew we would have to inspect the trail to determine how much work would need to be done and what our bid would need to be. We were able to find some maps and discovered that the location of the trail was in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, near LaGrande, at the far Eastern side of Oregon. Not a problem, other than the fact that it was more than 400 miles from our location, Bellingham, Washington. Since we had literally no capital for our ‘business’, we didn’t have a truck or actually any vehicle between us. We didn’t have the ability to rent a vehicle either, so we went to our default transportation mode, hitchhiking. So that’s what we did. Stuck out our thumbs to embark on this new and exciting possible business venture. Budding businessmen we were!

Through the kindness of several trusting drivers, we were able to enjoy the ride to Eastern Oregon and get to the vicinity of the trail within one day. The following morning, we got up early, got a ride to the trailhead, and began our due diligence. We hiked the trail, doing our version of inspection, not knowing what we were looking for. Nevertheless, it was a nice trail, actually quite beautiful. It didn’t appear to need that much work. There did happen to be a number of fallen trees that would need to be cleared. Although neither of us had ever used a chainsaw before, we decided that it might be preferable to that of a crosscut saw (another of our high-level executive thoughts). We decided that this was definitely the job meant for us, and so we headed back for Bellingham, excitedly sticking our thumbs out.

After getting back to my dorm room executive office, we had to put our heads together and figure out how much to bid for the job and how to submit the bid. Once again, our research prowess propelled us forward. We found out what the average bid per mile for trail maintenance had been the previous year and discounted it by something like thirty percent (after all, our overhead wasn’t that high). Somehow, we were able to assemble the forms and paperwork, and we tendered our bid of $9,500. This went to the regional US Forest Service office in Seattle. Once that was done, we waited. And waited some more, wondering if they actually even got our bid.

Finally, we got a letter. A very official letter. Printed on fancy US Forest Service stationary. Although each of us tried to appear nonchalant, we practically tore the letter apart. We weren’t being very good anti-capitalists. The letter acknowledged that they had received our bid, thanked us for submitting it, and most importantly, they wanted us to come to the regional office in Seattle to go over everything. Was that out-of-sight or what. Obviously, we were in the groove. We were going to become government contractors. On the way to our first billion. This was insanely cool.

In keeping with our normal transportation protocol, Doug and I hitchhiked to Seattle from my dorm room executive office in Bellingham. When we finally got to the Forest Service office, we were politely escorted to a boardroom and asked to take our seats and wait. We acted like we did meetings like this every week. That we were really cool businessmen. We waited, for what seemed an eternity, but finally the door opened. In walked three middle-aged men, all in suits. I hadn’t seen a suit in several years, so I was duly impressed. They were very cordial, asked us if we wanted anything to drink, and sat down. Each of them took several moments to look us over, obviously immensely impressed with us; twenty-year-olds with gnarly hair and questionable clothes and hygiene.

I felt quite honored when they addressed us by our last names. They then informed us that our bid was the lowest one submitted for this particular contract, and that it would be accepted, although they had a few questions to ask us. “Have you seen the trail?” “We sure have - just a week ago. It was a great trail!” “Do you have any experience, have you maintained any other trails?” “No, not really. But we’ve hiked a bunch of trails.”

“Ok. Do you have a performance bond?” “Uh. Um. Not really. What is a performance bond, exactly?”

Because I’m so high-level intuitive, I could see from the expressions on their faces that they were starting to think of us as their entertainment. One of the men answered me, “You need a bond from an insurance company of 150% of your bid price to assure us that the job will be completed satisfactorily. In other words, a bond for $14,250. Without that we can’t award you the contract. Or, if you prefer you can deposit the $14,250 in cash into an escrow account.” With that, the wind quickly dropped out of our sails. Our balloon popped. If we were bipolar, we immediately went from manic to depressive. Probably because we had no cash, no credit, no experience, no company, no way to obtain a bond. So, no trail job.

With our heads on the pavement, we jumped on our thumbs back to Bellingham. So much for our gargantuan multi-billion-dollar anti-capitalist business. The silver-lining is that I did learn a little about how real business works. It gave me a foretaste of entrepreneurship, which I later enjoyed. Note: Doug later got a job with a trail building contractor and actually learned the trade.

In retrospect, it was actually quite a thrilling adventure. We were momentarily a big-time trail company, in our heads anyway. I learned to appreciate nice trails. Trails have likely been around as long as mankind itself. Walking a new trail is like stepping into a new world. Some trails, like the Pacific Crest Trail have been around for more than a hundred years and were first utilized by Native Americans. In the Bible the Israelites certainly could attest to the value of trails as they marched around the Sanai Peninsula for forty years. I can also speak to trails of a spiritual nature. My personal trail in coming to the saving knowledge of Jesus, my Lord and Savior, took me through some very rough patches. It wasn’t a quick, short little jaunt. Not an easy trail by any means. But I eventually got there, to my Destination. There are a multitude of trails out there. I pray that if you don’t know Jesus yet, you will ask God to lead you to the trail that leads you to Him. He said “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Thank you very much for reading my story. Hey, I have a big favor to ask you. If you enjoyed the story, please punch the ole’ ‘like’ button. I would really appreciate it. By the way, if you’re not already one of my faithful subscribers, I invite you to subscribe to receive more free stories. I would be truly honored. Be sure to be on the lookout for my next nail-biting story, ‘LETHAL INJECTION’ on November 8^th

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