​Generation Drilling stemmed from my father's company, Affordable Water Systems, which he started in 1990. He brought with him the experience of drilling in Eastern Oregon as a young man with his uncle. Starting his own business, he faced the challenges of learning the trade and overcoming the many difficulties drillers encounter.

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After many years of struggle, the scales finally tipped, and he was able to provide a good life for my brother and me.

My brother, being older, started on the rig first as a helper for our dad, working weekends while he was in school. However, he ultimately took a different path and joined the military. I, being a more rambunctious child, was put out on the rig at a much younger age—12.

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Often suspended from school, my dad wasn’t about to let me have a day off as a reward for bad behavior. Instead, he put me to work on the rig, where he worked that attitude out of me. This quickly turned into weekend work by choice. After only a couple of years on the rig, I picked up many skills that would eventually lead me to start my own business. My dad often enjoyed watching customers' faces when something got tangled on the mast and his 14-year-old helper (me) would quickly climb 30 feet up the drilling mast to untangle it and climb back down in a short time.

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This eventually led to a very good working relationship and developed a strong bond between my father and me. We would arrive at jobs knowing exactly what the other person was doing. Rain or shine, we were out there together, getting the job done, with me taking on more responsibility each year.

In 2014, while we were out on the rig one day, my father suffered a major heart attack. By a stroke of luck, we were working just five minutes from a hospital, which never happens. I was able to rush him there, where they performed immediate surgery and saved his life. But we knew then and there that his days on the rig were over.

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I took over drilling completely under his company. We phased from his company to mine over the course of two years, and thus, Generation Drilling was officially established. Since then, we have proudly served Skagit, Snohomish, and Island counties.