Airway Sand And Gravel Sisters Getting Tons (And Tons) Of Business After Reluctantly Taking Over Gravel Pit

Students walking into Medical Lake Elementary School stomp unknowingly across gravel that makes Leann Purtill and Stacy Fleming proud.

The crushed rock was supplied by their company, Airway Sand and Gravel, which is picking up speed in its third year of business.

Among the other projects the company has supplied gravel are downtown Spokane’s Wall Street trolley project, numerous Fairchild Air Force Base jobs, and the Spokane International Airport’s new ground transport center.

In 1994, the sisters’ first year of business, the Airway Heights gravel pit did $84,000 in sales. That leapt 328 percent the next year, to $360,000. This year, they project sales of more than $500,000.

On a busy day, it’s easy to see why.

Purtill, the business manager, salesperson and collections department, is a whirlwind of action. Dashing around the company trailer with a cellular phone pressed to her ear, she quotes prices, weighs trucks and runs outside to deliver receipts to drivers headed off to construction sites.

Down in the gravel pit, Purtill’s younger sister, Fleming, helps the company’s one employee load as many as 200 trucks in a day.

“The key is to get the trucks in and out,” Purtill said between phone calls.

The gravel pit wasn’t always the finely tuned operation it is today. Their father originally ran it as a retirement business, doing “maybe $50,000” in sales per year, Purtill said.

When he died and left his daughters the business, the women weren’t sure they could run it. So they put it up for sale.

But no buyers surfaced, and after two years, they decided to give it a shot.

The sisters worked out of a small hut big enough for one person to turn around. They didn’t have a clue about how to find jobs to bid. Their small portable scale made them ineligible to bid government jobs, which require the more precise measurements of a 70-foot scale.

But in May of 1994, they joined the Associated General Contractors of America, which distributes information about jobs available for bidding. They graduated to a trailer, and installed a phone, fax and coffee maker. Last year, they added the precious, 70-foot truck scale.

Perhaps the most difficult obstacle to success was something Purtill, 45, and Fleming, 43, mention reluctantly - being women in a traditionally male field.

With competitors including such well-established multimillion-dollar companies as Central Pre-Mix Concrete Co., Shamrock Paving Co., and Acme Material and Construction Co., both sisters felt they had to prove they were just as good.

“You get that criticism from men - it’s a woman doing a man’s job,” Fleming said. “We had to prove ourselves, not to the contractors, but to the other people in the business.”

They’re certified with the state as a woman-owned business, but, Purtill said, it hasn’t won them any jobs.

“We have got every job because we bid it the lowest,” Purtill said.

Purtill and Fleming’s personalities make them opposites, but perfect for the business. The only thing they share is a slight family resemblance and infectious enthusiasm.

Fleming prefers the labor part of the operation, and doesn’t mind being photographed in her torn, dirty, blue jumpsuit. Curly brown hair is pulled through the back of her baseball cap into a pony tail. Her face is ruddy and weathered from the sun and wind.

Purtill, on the other hand, is blond, coifed and has three earrings in each ear. Her makeup was carefully applied. She’s 45, but would like you to believe she’s younger. She reveals that she’s a grandmother with that “can-you-believe-it” look on her face.

Purtill, the consummate salesperson, has sold everything from makeup to petroleum products to diet plans. When she began selling dirt and gravel, she’d follow construction trucks out of her competitor’s driveways to give them her sales pitch.

“If I believe in it,” she said, “I can sell it.”

Fleming, on the other hand, retired three years ago from 18 years as a UPS driver. When her father died and left his daughters the gravel pit, Fleming was the one who wanted it immediately. Purtill took some convincing.

“It fits us,” Purtill now says of the gravel pit.

“It’s so simple,” adds Fleming.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo