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King Airs help Wilson Construction by MeLinda Schnyder reach remote jobsites
Wilson Construction is a family-owned electric utility construction business headquartered in Canby, Oregon, with a fleet of three fixed-wing aircraft including these Beechcraft King Airs based at Aurora State Airport. (GABRIEL MILLER PHOTOGRAPHY)
Stacy Wilson, vice president of Wilson Construction, grew up in the electric utility construction business. Her grandfather, Matt O. Wilson, started building power lines in 1952 to connect farms in rural Oregon and Washington to the electrical grid. Stacy’s father and current Wilson Construction president, Don Wilson, joined the company in 1974. Early in his career, after driving 60,000 miles throughout Oregon and Washington in one year, he joked that he was not going to have a home life if he kept driving for business. So he decided to do what any smart problem-solver would do – he got his pilot’s license.
Stacy was raised flying in which has expanded beyond the
innovative construction solutions made possible by a fleet of fixed- wing aircraft.
“The company really started to expand to different geographic areas and into different projects once my dad took over,” Stacy said. “He would tell you that every time he bought a bigger airplane, our customer base could expand more and more.”
Now, Wilson Construction owns three fixed-wing aircraft, including two Beechcraft King Airs, that fly 700-800 hours each year to make visits to jobsites that are often remote, transport management to customer meet- ings, position lineman crews and support the company’s in-house helicopter division.
airplanes piloted by Don and helping out around the office. So it should be no surprise that Stacy, too, is now a pilot at Wilson Construction,
JUNE 2016
Pacific Northwest over the past half- century and into one of the largest privately held utility construction companies in the nation, by using
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