Hard-working people and wide range of equipment enable Tully Construction to diversify.

Tully Construction Company Inc. works in the thick of the New York construction scene. One of the largest construction firms in the state, it tackles projects for an alphabet soup of government agencies, including the state DOT, the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority), the NYC DEP (Dept. of Environmental Protection), DOS (Dept. of Sanitation), DDC (Dept. of Design & Construction) and PANY (Port Authority of New York & New Jersey), to name a few.

The customer base reflects the company’s broad capabilities. Founded in 1988 as a heavy highway firm, Tully Construction has branched out to work on tunnels, subways, buildings, sewer and water lines, environmental remediation, landfills, waste handling and recycling. The diversification results in large part from the company recognizing opportunity. For example, the closing of landfills in NYC and Long Island created a need for the trucking of waste to landfills in outlying locations. Tully Construction purchased a number of Cat^®-powered trucks and began hauling solid waste and sludge from treatment plants.

“Shortly thereafter we started Tully Environmental as a separate division,” recalls Jim Tully, one of four Tully brothers who own and manage the company. “We’ve done environmental projects in New York and New Jersey and even Connecticut,” he says.

The company now has a garbage transfer station in Flushing to accommodate contracts with New York City, and sludge is hauled for the county of Westchester.

The slow economy also prompted diversification. “There’s not as much street work as there used to be,” Tully says. “So we’ve taken on new challenges. We built a large sanitation garage, and now we’re building a bus depot on Staten Island. We’re staying busy.”

People Make a Difference

Asked how the company managed to branch out so broadly, Tully points first to the union company’s 625 employees. “We pride ourselves on having dedicated workers who want to see us succeed. A lot of them have been with us for a long, long time.”

He also credits the smooth coordination of management duties among the Tully brothers. Jim is general superintendent, Tom handles the estimating department, Peter is president, and Ken runs Tully Environmental and the company’s asphalt operations.

The company-wide dedication showed prominently after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, as employees worked on the cleanup around the clock for eight months. Jim Tully rented an apartment nearby so he could be on site 15 hours per day.

Properly Equipped

Diversification also requires having the right equipment for the various jobs. In June, Tully Construction began revamping a three-mile stretch of the Grand Central Parkway, a busy highway that serves LaGuardia Airport and leads from Long Island to Queens and Manhattan. Prior to starting the work, the company purchased five Cat 321D LCR Hydraulic Excavators, which feature a compact radius tail swing of just five feet, six inches (1.68 m).

“That job is really tight because of the heavy traffic, so we have three of the Cat 321s out there. Those machines can work in tight quarters,” says Andrew Tully, who is Jim Tully’s son and who helps manage the company’s equipment fleet.

He notes that the company maximizes the versatility of its crews and machines by purchasing Cat equipment “with work tool couplers, forks, booms and whatever we can use.”

The Tully brothers have been working with their Caterpillar^® dealer, H.O. Penn Machinery Co., since the late 1970s while employed in their father’s company, Willets Point Contracting. “The service from our dealer has been phenomenal,” Jim Tully says. “That plays a big part in our equipment decisions. They work hard to take care of us.”

Andrew Tully adds, “We can get parts overnight from H.O. Penn when we need them, and the dealer’s service technicians will come out to the field to help us out.”

Another benefit, Andrew Tully says, is that the Cat equipment is popular with the crews. “The operators don’t even want to get into a machine if it’s not a Cat. You don’t get any better than Cat loaders, especially the new ones, which are a little bigger and heavier, and you can do a lot more with them. And the M315 excavators, there’s not a machine that can compare to it in its weight class.”

Tully Construction owns nearly 90 pieces of Cat equipment, including dozers, wheel loaders, excavators, backhoes, pavers, soil compactors and material handlers. The company relies on Cat equipment, Jim Tully says, “because it’s extremely reliable, and because Caterpillar offers such a vast range of equipment to meet all of our needs.”

COMPANY PROFILE:
TULLY CONSTRUCTION CO. INC., FLUSHING, N.Y.
Principals: Jim Tully, Tom Tully, Peter Tully, Ken Tully
Applications: Highway, infrastructure & building construction, landfills, environmental remediation
Cat Dealer: H.O. Penn Machinery Co.