Andris White has faced a number of struggles – struggles that would have beaten many people down.
He dropped out of high school at age 16, and his adoptive parents both died of cancer when he was in his early 20s.
His first three construction businesses failed. The first was due to youthful inexperience, the second to a predatory contract that led to bankruptcy, and the third to a partner’s embezzlement from the business.
The pressures of the business failures led to three divorces. At one point, he was homeless and living out of his truck with his dog.
But Andris persevered, stayed positive and kept working hard.
After all that, he formed AM Equipment, which has been going strong for 15 years.
Today, the company has 20 employees in two locations. The Ipswitch, Massachusetts, location performs heavy highway, concrete, paving, and site prep, while the Hogansburg, New York, office focuses on building construction. AM Equipment is one of 12 finalists for Equipment World’s 2024 Contractor of the Year awards program.
“I’ve always had a positive outlook,” Andris says, reflecting on it all. “I always look for the good in people, and I always give back to my community. There’s always going to be bad people, and I’ve run into more than my fair share, perhaps, but I know I love the game. I love the excitement of a new job and seeing happy customers.”
An unbelievable journey
Andris’ parents were living in a communal basement of iron workers in Boston when his mother found out she was pregnant. With no place of their own to bring a child home to, they put him up for adoption.
At 3 months old, Andris was adopted by Latvian immigrants with a patriarch who had a “Depression-era work ethic.”
He told me, “If you’re old enough to go to school, you’re old enough to work.” So, Andris started running heavy equipment at age 6 with wooden blocks strapped to pedals so his feet could reach. By 11, he was already a seasoned operator.
Andris loved learning but hated school, so he dropped out at age 16 to start his first construction business in northern Massachusetts. The naive teen thought he knew everything there was to know about construction work. The business failed within two years.
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“I learned very quickly that I didn’t know that much after all,” says Andris. So, he took a job as a field engineer with a local company.
But two years under someone else’s thumb was enough, and Andris got the itch to go out on his own again. He started out as a small residential contractor, surviving the recession of the late ’80s and growing to become a union contractor by the ’90s.
During the same period,