There was a time when Wilford Clyde did not see himself being involved in the family business. By the late 1970s, when he neared graduation from Brigham Young University, W.W. Clyde, the heavy civil construction company founded by his grandfather, had spawned a collection of construction-related businesses ranging from ready-mix concrete, lumber and hardware supply to bonding and insurance—all with Clyde family members involved in some way. That firm has now become Clyde Cos., with an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue and nearly 5,000 employees, largely under Wilford Clyde’s leadership.
“I wasn’t going to be a construction guy. I got my degree in accounting,” says Clyde, company chairman and its former president and CEO, from a spacious office at the firm’s Orem, Utah, headquarters. “I’d always liked working summer construction jobs, but I had an older brother Paul who I saw being out on jobs all week and he only saw his family on weekends, and I knew I didn’t really want that,” he explains. “I had older cousins that were involved with the business ahead of me and it just didn’t seem like there was the right opportunity.”