Dustin Monke

Sculpting success: Oil boom helps Dickinson native’s welding business take off

0302 Iron Works 1 — Mike Gayda stands outside of the Iron Works Welding shop in north Dickinson.

Mike Gayda tried going to college.

After attending Dickinson State University for a short time he acknowledged, “College wasn’t for me.”

So, knowing he had a talent for welding, he took jobs with Steffes Corp. in Dickinson and at the Case IH Steiger plant in Fargo. It was at the latter that the Dickinson native had a chance conversation with a co-worker who tipped him off about welders running their own service trucks in the burgeoning western North Dakota oil fields.

So, in 2006, Gayda decided to move home and start his own business.

“It was perfect timing,” Gayda said.

When he was 20 years old, Gayda started Iron Works Welding with one service truck. He worked out of a heatless quonset on Dickinson’s south side by himself.

By 2008, before the true onset of the oil boom, he had found enough work to hire two employees and build a 6,800 square-foot building on a little less than an acre of land on a space just north of Dickinson in the industrial park off Highway 22.

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Property owners have right above all

Last fall, after two years of listening to input from the public, special-interest groups and government agencies, the North Dakota Industrial Commission got serious about creating a list of “extraordinary places.”

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem in December designated a list of 18 special places in western North Dakota and crafted a proposed set of rules aimed at limiting the impact of energy exploration in those areas.

Great, right? Republicans working in harmony with the environmental groups to soften oil’s impact on the state? “Is this heaven?” we asked. “No, it’s North Dakota,” they responded.
Too bad it’s a little more complicated than that.

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Rebels with a vision: Brothers open shop specializing in cylinder repair

TAYLOR — Inside the newest building in this tiny town along Highway 10 sits Ryan Rebel’s pet project: a 1944 Ford pickup truck.

It’s nothing special yet, but the 21-year-old takes pride in it. He has been working on the truck since he was in high school.

As he stood back to describe and admire the truck — something of a collector’s item as World War II all but halted the production of Ford pickups that year — Ryan described what it takes to restore a vehicle like that.

“You’ve got to have a vision when you start something like that,” he said. “When you start with some frame rails on the garage floor, you’ve got to have something in your mind — what you want it to look like when you’re done.”

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Enough is enough with Keystone XL

I’ve always wondered about the people who protest certain topics. Are they really that upset? Does everything rile them up that much? Does somebody pay these people to protest? Is this their job?

Lately, every time there is political movement on the Keystone XL pipeline, there’s an environmental activist group there with a protest — though we don’t get to see it because the protests usually only take place in a coastal California city like San Francisco or Los Angeles, and, of course, Washington, D.C. Both places are so far from where the proposed pipeline would go that one has to wonder why people would protest for something they’ve likely never seen in a place they’ve likely never been nor ever plan to go.

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Emergency Services Center ‘huge’ for New England

020914.N.DP_.EMERGENCYSERVICES1 — New England Fire Chief Joey Kathrein stands Wednesday at the construction site of the new city’s Emergency Services Center, which will serve the city’s rural fire department and ambulance service and have sleeping quarters.

NEW ENGLAND — All it takes is one look inside the New England Fire and Ambulance Hall to see the small town could use a better facility.

Packed like sardines into a 40-foot long by 80-foot wide steel building on the town’s Main Street are two ambulances and five fire trucks of different sizes. One truck is always parked outside.

“Those who have questioned why we need a new building, all they have to do is walk into ours right now,” Fire Chief Joey Kathrein said. “It’s actually dangerous. That’s a big reason why we wanted to expand.”

With the help of grants, fundraising and a donated piece of land, the town is building the $1.15 million Emergency Services Center on the city’s northeast edge to house its fire and ambulance services.

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