Lofty Aspirations
The Crane Guys President Wes Staley credits grandfather
for his ‘relentless’ work ethic
When Wes Staley was five or six years old, his grandfather, Ed Staley, tapped him on the foot at 4 a.m. one morning to wake him up for another day of work as the pint-sized helper at Ed’s Crane Service in Arcadia, Calif.
But unlike most mornings, young Wes flipped over and decided to fall back to sleep. Twenty minutes later, Ed returned to Wes’ bedroom with an ultimatum.
“He said, ‘If you don’t want to work with me, I won’t force you, but remember—it’s an honor and a privilege when somebody wants you to work for them,’” Wes recalls. “From that point on, I always got out of bed on time and never missed a step. That lesson pretty much molded who I am.”
Today, at age 31, Wes is the early-rising President of The Crane Guys, a La Mirada, Calif.-based business that has grown rapidly to include a staff of 60 and a fleet of 25 cranes ranging from 2 tons to 265 tons.
Founded in 2007, The Crane Guys provides crane services across Southern California for a wide variety of construction projects and buildings, from hotels to hospitals to government offices. In addition to crane rental and crane services, the company provides lift planning, traffic control, and permitting.
Life Lessons Translate to Business Acumen
Wes notes that his firm has grown more quickly than his late, prudent grandfather would have ever approved of: “He always told me to slow down,” he says with a laugh.
But his success would be unthinkable without a childhood spent accompanying his grandfather to work as often as he could, he says.
“He taught me the workday’s not done until the job is complete, that you have to take calls from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., and that you don’t say ‘No.’ The first time you say ‘no,’ that opportunity might never come back,” Wes says.
“Today, anything you need, I’m there. If you call me at midnight on a Monday, I’m there. If you call me Sunday at my wedding, I’m still going to be there,” he adds. “I’m relentless. Everything I do is full bore, 100 percent.”
Wes says the other key lesson his grandfather taught him was about assurance. “He gave me a goal: At every job site, I had to look every guy in the eye and shake his hand, and if I did that, he paid me 25 cents,” he recalls. “Remember, I was little and these were big, grizzly, scary-looking guys. But that was a huge lesson—to look into people’s eyes, speak up, and be confident.”
That confidence led him to launch Wes’ Crane Service at age 18. “I was a cowboy with one crane, and I went out and tried to tackle the world on my own,” he says. “I did pretty good, but I had a lot to learn about the business and about life.”
Learning by Trial and Error
Three years later, he launched The Crane Guys with ample help from his wife, Michelle Staley, who handles the company’s financial side. The two-person team cobbled together an understanding of how to run a successful, rapidly growing business.
“Neither of us went to business school. We just opened books, read them, talked to friends in the business and figured it out together,” he says.
Michelle’s sister, Melissa McNutt, serves as The Crane Guys’ Office Manager and Dispatch Manager. “She and Michelle are the rock stars of this whole thing,” Wes says. “I’m the luckiest guy. I have a rock star family that’s always stuck behind me and the greatest crew and office people in the world, people who give it their all. If I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t be able to keep it together.”
The big challenge now, says Wes, is keeping up with the growth—not just his own company’s growth, but the industry’s in general. “The trends are longer booms, bigger cranes, bigger buildings,” he says, adding that growth should never come at the expense of safety.
The Crane Guys has a full-time safety director and holds safety meetings at every job. “We’re all about safety … we’re very good at communicating with the guys about safety. We want them to work hard and make a lot of money, but we also have to get them home safe to their families every night,” says Wes.
A Turning Point
In terms of his own personal safety and health, Wes says he’s learned a lot in the nine years since he overcame an addiction to drugs and alcohol.
“That was the big turning point for me and the business, learning to stand up and take responsibility for my actions,” Wes says.
“It’s hard to do—it hurts. But life is so much better sober. You have a superior focus when you’re sober. You’re not focused on partying. You’re focused on treating people right, treating yourself right and running your business right,” he shares.
From One Generation to the Next
Wes and Michelle are now the proud parents of a three-year-old daughter, Presley, and a one-year-old son, Rockefeller, whom they call “Rocky.” While it might be too early to start thinking about the Staley kids taking over the family business, Wes says one of the biggest joys in life is showing his children what he does for a living.
“I’ve done thousands of jobs in my life, but nothing compares to the first time I got to take my girl on a crane, put her on my lap and watch her blow the horn. To me, nothing’s cooler than that,” he says.
Wes also fondly recalls the last time he got to work on a crane with his grandfather. Ed Staley died of a stroke in 2011, while on the job, “doing what he loved,” says Wes. “Retirement wasn’t an option for my grandfather. He loved working, and he instilled that passion in me,” Wes affirms. “He taught me to never make decisions based on money, but on what’s right. He taught me to work hard and stand up and do what’s right.”