Luis Flores is launching Northside Concrete this spring. Here, the Moorhead man is shown with an octagonal patio he constructed last summer. Photos/used with permission.

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Like many determined entrepreneurs, Luis Flores is working his way through a forest of issues as he launches the business he has dreamed about all his life. He calls it Northside Concrete. Already he has lined up residential and commercial projects to occupy at least the first three months of his first season.

The young Moorhead man has worked his way through the requisite paperwork, permits and finance hurdles that are faced by nearly every start-up. For Luis, though, the steps that he has climbed are steeper than for most. Born and raised at the lowest economic stratum, he has been powered by sheer grit.

Northside Concrete – named after the Moorhead neighborhood in which he has always lived – came together in November after 10 years of learning the construction trade from the ground up … 10 years of saving what he could, buying tools putting in extra hours to master the craft.

“What led me to open my own company? Growing up out of poverty,” he readily explains. “My dad broke his back and was disabled when I was just 3 or 4 years old. Mom always worked two or three jobs to support us. It was hard.”

In school, he says, “I was bullied and made fun of. My family couldn’t afford the fees for activities in high school. I didn’t want my friends to see I was a charity case, so I dropped out of sports. It was embarrassing.”

Instead, he went to work after school. “I started doing field work with my uncles and cousins when I was maybe 11 or 12, weeding beets and soybeans and whatever the farmer wanted,” he remembers. Too young to legally work for hire, he was paid under the table: “But it was an opportunity to make money to buy shoes and school clothes, and I was glad to have it.”

Despite the challenges, Luis became the first in his family to graduate from high school. “I was so happy I made my family proud,” he reflects.

After receiving his degree from Moorhead High School in 2010, he worked briefly at Burger Time, then weighed and boxed product and drove a forklift at a manufacturing plant in Fargo. He enrolled at the State College of Science in construction management, he says, “but it didn’t work out. I had my first kid, and I had to go to work full-time.” Instead, he landed day jobs through Labor Ready, earning $7.25 an hour.

At 18, he started working construction “I’ve been doing it ever since,” he reports. “I started as a runt. I knew nothing. I listened to the smart guys and learned everything that I could.

“I soaked everything up like a sponge,” he goes on. “I watched and learned. Sometimes I stuck around after working hours to practice skills.” He learned to read blueprints and to use a laser to set the grade for curbs, to run power trowels, to lay a curb line. The job site taught him what he needed to know about stamped concrete and colored concrete. He mastered driving a skid steer loader, scissor lift, bulldozer and excavator.

“You watch, you learn, you ask questions, you practice,” he says of those lessons. “I pretty much learned everything I know by experience.”

Luis worked for “seven or eight” construction firms over the years. Among them: contractors building the 20-foot walls of a pumping station for the Fargo Diversion Project and, last summer, the Fargo water treatment plant. “They were all awesome to me, but I wanted to work for myself someday. I was 30. Last fall, it was time.”

Several years ago, he had begun to apply his boundless energy to the foundation of that vision. He took on concrete side jobs – custom patios and driveways — for friends or friends-of-friends. “That taught me a lot, too. I learned how to bid on my own and balance the cost of materials and labor.”

Hard lessons, as well. “If a guy bailed on me but I had three yards of concrete coming for a patio, I’d just wheelbarrow the mud to the back yard, go back and get more, then finish and rake it myself. I’d be out there in the dark, working in the cold, all to keep my head above water.”

His motivation, he says, has always been making sure his three children have a better life. “I don’t want to give my children the upbringing I had,” he asserts. He extends that beyond his family to friends who come from similar impoverished backgrounds. They, in turn, have encouraged him in launching Northside Concrete. Some will fill out his crews as the company grows.

“I know I’m taking a huge chance here,” Luis admits, “but I’m pretty confident. I just don’t want to give up for my kids, for my family. The sun is starting to come up. I’m shooting for the moon.”

To reach Northside Concrete, call 218-443-2583 or email NorthsideConcrete2021@outlook.com. You can also find it on FaceBook.