Long before Robert “Bobby” Coleman founded BC Dirtwurx, long before he signed off aircraft as airworthy for the United States Air Force, he was a boy sitting in the driver’s seat of an eighteen- wheeler he was far too young to operate. “My mama was five-one and a truck driver,” he says. “I was ten years old driving down the road. I wasn’t supposed to, but she let me drive anyhow.” She fed him in the steering wheel. She taught him gears before she taught him anything else. She made him guess the name of every country song before the first lyric hit. He can’t ask her about any of those moments now. But this year, when he bought his first 18-wheeler, the memory felt close. “Buying that truck really makes me think of her and all the times we had on the road,” he says. That mix of grit, heart, and responsibility carries straight into the company he runs today. BC Dirtwurx did not begin with investors or grand plans. It began with an old tractor Coleman bought while still serving. “I started doing tractor work with a 1950s Alice Chalmers tricycle tractor. Some people call them death traps,” he says. “We worked four tens, so I was off most Mondays. I’d do driveways and bush hogging for people.” The work snowballed. Small jobs turned into grading jobs, and grading turned into excavation. In 2018, he made it official: BC Dirtwurx was born.
“They found cysts in my kidneys. In 2017, the doctor was going to medically separate me,” he says. “I was already doing tractor work at the time, so I went full-fledged into the business.” Medication stabilized his health. He stayed in uniform long enough to retire. And the business kept growing.
Coleman spent over 22 years in the Air Force, much of it maintaining aircraft where mistakes could cost lives. “In the military, working on airplanes, it’s all about attention to detail,” he says. “You’re responsible for people’s lives. I bring that into my business. Sometimes I feel like I’m OCD on job sites and it’s got to be just right.”
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VETERANS TRIBUTE EDITION
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