Quick-Fix Bridge Builder Pulls No Punches

C.C. Myers, a bridge repair maestro, is known for his bluntness and fairness as well as his penchant for getting jobs done fast

The life story of Clinton C. Myers is as colorful as he is. Born on a California farm, he left home at 16, saw the construction of the Long Beach Freeway and pulled over to ask for a job. He didn’t know how to read plans. But in the first week, “I fell in love,” says the 70-year-old contractor. “I made up my mind I was a bridge man.”

Myers dug in his heels at a firm called Polich and Benedict Inc., then started his own business, MCM Construction, with his brother. He went out on his own in 1977, establishing the firm C.C. Myers Inc., Rancho Cordova, Calif. “The first person I hired still works for me,” he says.

Multimedia  View Award of Excellence Luncheon and Acceptance Speech of C.C. Myers   April 3, 2008

Over the years, the firm has established a reputation as the ultimate quick-fix bridge repairer. It began cultivating that reputation after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. “It was the first job where Caltrans ever gave a bonus,” recalls Myers of his contract to repair a section of Highway 1 in Watsonville. “They put a $600,000 cap on the bonus. I asked why. They said, ‘We didn’t think it could be done any faster.’ I said, ‘I can.’” The California Dept. of Transportation raised the cap to $1 million, and the firm finished in 45 days, a week early, Myers says.

Last May, it earned a $5-million bonus for repairing a 165-ft-long segment of Interstate 580 in Emeryville in 18 days. Caltrans officials had budgeted 50 days for the repair to the section, melted after a tanker-truck accident.

Myers confesses that when when one of the steel suppliers was late in delivering, “I got mad, looked him in the face and said, ‘If you don’t get this steel in now, you’ll never do a job for me again.’ He got it straightened out. I was biting  my nails.” He adds, “If people aren’t used to working together, I understand you have to get organized and have them come together.”

Blunt but fair that seems to be the consensus on Myers. Carl Douglas, owner of Stinger Welding, Coolidge, Ariz., the steel fabricator on the Emeryville job, says, “He’s fair and he treats people right, and that will get you a long way in life.” Adds Tom Holsman, chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of California: “I think growing up in the industry the way he did starting from carpenter all the way up the ranks taught him how important it is to take care of all your resources and people.”

“You will never wonder where you stand with C.C. Myers,” Holsman sums up. “His directness is something to be both respected and feared.”

Over the 2007 Labor Day weekend, Myers’ crews did it again lifting out a 6,500-ton slab of road connecting the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to Yerba Buena Island and replacing it with a fully constructed deck 11 hours ahead of schedule. “When we proposed [the bridge roll-in], he didn’t blink an eye,” says Tony Anziano, Caltrans’ toll bridge program manager.