Summit Stone Works Inc.
“The install trucks are four-wheel drive and have chains with them, so we can generally make it to customers’ homes,” he says. “However, one time the install trailer was pulled a quarter mile by a Caterpillar, because the driveway was inaccessible to vehicles due to steep grades and a recent blizzard.”
Monroe’s preference is to keep all the materials in a box trailer that’s left inside at the shop overnight to keep the stone both clean and warm, and then unload pieces into a client’s attached garage.
Click photo to enlargeHe notes that not only does the box trailer serve as an advertisement for Summit Stone Works, but the materials inside aren’t going to arrive coated in magnesium chloride churned up from icy roads.
Another challenge at all times of the year can be small elevators in some of the high-rise condominiums that dot the area.
“We use cranes quite a bit,” Monroe says. “We’ll hire a crane to lift slabs up to a third-floor patio, or take off the railing so we can move the slabs inside in the biggest possible pieces.”
However, some of the company’s unique stone deliveries occur with commercial jobs. Monroe estimates no more than 15 percent of his work is commercial, but he’s done work for Keystone Resort, with a large potential project on tap for this summer at the Copper Mountain Resort.
An obvious favorite, though, is the bathrooms Summit Stone Works helped build at the top of the Arapahoe Basin ski area.
“Sometimes we’ll load these things into big trucks and get driven up the side of the mountain on the ski trails,” he says. “However, the bathroom pieces went up on the chairlift and all our tools went up on the chairlift. They started the chairlift for us, and we rode to the top of the mountain that way, holding onto the vanities. Then, we carried them into the bathrooms.”
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS
The company doesn’t strictly confines its activities to the peaks and valleys of Summit County, either. Working with designers and contractors picking up work in Vail or closer to Denver means the company also branched out in those directions, as well as over Hoosier Pass into the now-famed South Park area and neighboring Park and Chaffee counties.
The crew has also done a few jobs in another well-known skiing community, Steamboat Springs, Colo., but when time and distance are critical to profitability, Monroe says it’s too far to go.
“It’s a two-hour drive through the mountains and there are other fabricators there,” he says. “It’s not cost-effective to have two or three guys in a truck for two hours one-way.”
Nor is his marketing aimed in that direction. Besides his logoed trailer and word-of-mouth, Monroe remains committed to his friends at the Summit County Builders Association.