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Sometimes the lineage of the company is so direct you can draw a straight line from its start right to where is stands today. Triangle Asphalt Paving, Lebanon, IN, is a great example.

Leaton Day, grandfather to current president Steve Day, was a highway superintendent for Indiana's Boone County, and he had a solid background in engineering and road construction. His son, Jack Day, attended Purdue University but decided he'd rather work in the field, so he began working for a Richmond, IN, contractor. That contractor used to drive 90 miles to do paving work in Lebanon, and Jack Day got to thinking. In 1961 he quit his job in Richmond and started his own paving company in Lebanon with two dump trucks and an asphalt distributor.

"In 1961 my dad did anything, but he was doing basically small work throughout the area, primarily patching and chip seal," Steve Day says. "But he did anything he could including trucking and driveways. Then in 1964 he bought a paver and started paving streets in Lebanon and it just took off from there."

He brought along two partners (hence "Triangle" Asphalt), bought out one partner in 1968 and the other in 1978. Steve started working for the company in 1975 and Steve's brother, John, came on board in 1980.

For quite a while Triangle Asphalt operated its own asphalt plants, but they don't anymore. They began producing their own hot mix in 1965 with a used plant they refurbished. In 1970, Triangle upgraded that plant, added a second plant in 1978, and until 1980 ran three paving crews, two plants, and 20 dump trucks. And they needed all that because they did a lot of state work.