Tanner Angel
Equipment operator
Tanner is the fourth generation of his family to work in grading. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all operated their own grading businesses.
He said, “I’ve been going to work in the summers laboring for my grandpa and my dad since I was nine or ten years old. This is all I’ve ever done.”
Even though he got started young, Tanner didn’t know he wanted to follow his family into the grading business until he was a teenager.
What changed his mind? Machines. “Once I operated equipment and wasn’t laboring much anymore, I decided this was what I wanted to do,” he explained.
When Tanner graduated from high school, he traveled from Southern California to Colorado to take a job running scrapers in the oil fields.
“Honestly, working in the oilfield sucked," he recalled. "The hours were so long. We would work seven days a week for 12 hours a day. Obviously, the money’s there if you want to work that much, but you don’t have a life. You’re there to work, and that’s it. We would work for a month straight, and then we would get a week off, and I would fly home for that weeWhen Tanner returned to California, Tanner worked in the Riverside area for Sims Grading and an equipment rental company. Then he took a job with LB3 Enterprises, and his career took off.
“The biggest difference between LB3 and the other companies Iworked with since coming back from Colorado was the consistency. It’s every day for LB3. If you were one of their top guys, they kept you busy every single day. Some of these jobs went on for years. With the smaller companies, if you were doing a custom house pad, when you finished there wasn't always a job to go to next,” Tanner said.
Tanner loved grading so much, he started running his own side business on the weekends. He said, “On the weekends, I’ll do my own thing. I own a skid steer, which I mostly use to do backyard stuff. Little pads that need to be graded, dirt roads, miscellaneous stuff for homeowners. My life revolves around it."
Learn more about skid steers and becoming an equipment operator like Tanner.
