ord of mouth is all Alaska Pacific Leasing really needs these days to rent and sell construction equipment. Its advertising budget? Zero. Nil. Nada.
“We’re pretty low profile,” says David Faulk, a fifth-generation Alaskan who, with his wife Bonnie, owns Alaska Pacific Leasing. “We don’t have an advertising budget. We go off our reputation in the industry.”
For more than forty years, Alaska Pacific Leasing has supplied the construction, oil and gas, mining, engineering, and research/development industries with equipment and vehicles from Southeast Alaska to the North Slope. The company specializes in a variety of General Motor vehicles, Peterbilt trucks, and Caterpillar heavy equipment.
Alaska Pacific Leasing also provides sales and service for Jet and Eager Beaver trailers, as well as Broce Broom street sweepers.
Its Anchorage yard along Old Seward Highway and its yard in Fairbanks are home to D8 bulldozers, compactors, low-boys, trucks, and excavators. With new construction equipment in high demand these days, Alaska Pacific Leasing has been able to fill some of the gaps.
Bardon Simons, vice president of administration at Alaska Pacific Leasing, says he is proud to work for a company that can quickly respond to customer requests for equipment.
“Especially during the short Alaska construction season when time is of the essence and delays can be very costly,” Simons says.
“Most other companies would have charged me for that month,” DeMenno says. “But he didn’t charge me. It saved quite a bit of money. That’s just the kind of guy he is.”
DeMenno, who met Faulk years ago when Alaska Hydro-Ax cleared land on a piece of Faulk’s property, recently called him up to purchase new equipment from Alaska Pacific Leasing: a low-boy, truck, and a couple of excavators.
“Right now, you just can’t go get trucks,” DeMenno says. “So I called up Dave and said I need a truck but no one has them. He says, ‘Here you go. It’s got a couple thousand miles on it.’
“It really helped me out of a bind because we’re getting ready to do some fairly large projects and I needed the trucks,” he says.
With Faulk Brothers, new general construction projects like the Bayshore subdivision, Upper Huffman Road, a subdivision in Peters Creek, and an oil pad installation for Standard Oil gave the company a strong financial foundation—and reputation—in a young state that was poised to expand its footprint.
The Faulks also started Pacific Alaska Leasing in 1969; a real estate investment firm that currently owns several commercial buildings throughout Alaska and Arizona.
In 1978, Faulk formed Alaska Pacific Transport, which had a heavy-haul division and a tanker division.
“We hauled the first modules to Prudhoe Bay,” Faulk says. “We exclusively hauled all of the drag reducing agents that went out of the pipeline and built a chemical transport facility in Fairbanks.”
During that time, Alaska Pacific Transport got a lot of requests to do specialized work and lease equipment to oil companies and Alyeska Pipeline but, due to federal regulations, a trucking company couldn’t lease. So Faulk started Alaska Pacific Leasing. Alaska Pacific Transport still exists, but with a much smaller fleet.
“We’re pretty diversified,” Faulk says. “Most people have no idea how big we really are.”
Faulk is a fifth-generation Alaskan whose great-grandparents pioneered Anchorage before it was officially a city. His wife Bonnie, the director of Alaska Pacific leasing, juggles her time between running the family business and directing the Miss Alaska and Miss America pageants.
“When you look at David Faulk, you have to also look at his wife, Bonnie,” says John Odom, CEO of The Odom Corporation and a long-time friend of the Faulks. “They’re a team that has been very successful at their enterprise.”
Faulk’s Anchorage roots run deep. He once worked for Odom’s dad, driving trucks and working the warehouse at Anchorage Cold Storage. Faulk’s grandmother built the Brass Rail Restaurant on 4th Avenue, and his father started one of Anchorage’s earliest contracting companies called North Star, which no longer exists.
“I was raised on equipment,” Faulk says. “I was running loaders at thirteen. At that time, you could do that with a family-owned business.”
Seventy-one years later, Faulk is still enjoying a life built on construction equipment. He’s been a member of the Associated General Contractors of Alaska for the last twenty-five years and says he enjoys all of its benefits.
A perk of growing old is that he doesn’t have to bother with the stress of attracting customers. His only advertising includes the Alaska Pacific Leasing logo painted on some late-model Peterbilt water trucks and the company name painted on a leasable 40-foot water tower that can be seen from the road at its yard on Old Seward Highway.
“The contractors that would do business with us, they notice those things,” Faulk says. “It’s the best kind of advertising.”