The Alaska Contractor: Special 60th Anniversary Issue

“One of the big projects that I
remember was MB Contracting had
the contract to service concrete on
Elmendorf. They were doing runways
out there.
“In those days the cement was
bid by the companies and then they
would furnish the cement to the ready
mix companies. There weren’t very
many ready mix companies around,
but Kaiser had a contract to furnish
bulk cement and then we would furnish
it to MB or whoever.”
Thinking back about the ready mix
companies in Anchorage, Dougherty
said, “Hinchey Alaska Aggregate was
the largest one and then Anchorage
Sand and Gravel was owned by the
Waldron family—they were number
two. That was about it.
“I think APEX started in about ’57
or ’58, but Hinchey was the big operator
in the early days.”
Getting product to Alaska
“For a long time we used barges,
some LST barges. We would unload
them with a pump. Now it all comes
from foreign places on 25,000-ton
ships. It’s still pumped off.”
(Ed. Note: LST is the Navy’s acronym
for Landing Ship Tank. Hundreds of these
shallow-draft vessels were built for World
War II and were sold cheaply as surplus
in the late 1940s and early 1950s.)
Kaiser never lost a barge hauling cement
to Alaska, though they were often
delayed by weather. But, “we lost one
on a return trip,” Dougherty said. “They
ran into Rabbit Island down south of
Seward. I think maybe they were asleep
but nobody could prove it.”
The cement hauled by the LSTs
was essentially a dry powder which
was pumped out of the ship when it
arrived in Anchorage. According to
Dougherty, “We [Kaiser] had a couple
of pumps. It looked like a tractor only
the front … instead of wheels you had
two disks turning towards each other
and they would feed the cement in
this screw and air would come from
the shore and pull it [cement] back to
the silos.”
The pipeline
When asked about his favorite job
over the years, Dougherty thinks in
terms of the amount of concrete sold.
“I suppose it would have to be the
60th Anniversary Issue 1948–2008 The Alaska conTrAcTor 21