Jared Mensing officially began his business in October of 2021. Starting with one skid steer loader, his company now owns two excavators as well as a smaller excavator, two dump trucks and various other construction equipment. Mensing is shown, above, in his office of a building he recently purchased.

‘Just Do It’ may be the tagline most associated with a famous footwear company, but it is also the advice Jared Mensing received from his father, Neal, when the younger Mensing was considering starting a construction company.

Although Jared is now the owner of Mensing Construction, it is not the path he envisioned for himself when he graduated from Blue Earth Area High School in 2016. In fact, the road to owning his own company took many years to travel.

“After I graduated from BEA I went to school for ag production,” Mensing shares. “I found out I really did not like school and so I took a year off.”

When Mensing states he took a year off, he is referring to taking time off from school.

“I worked for Tim Blagg and helped demo and clean up buildings,” he explains.

When he did go back to school, Mensing studied architecture.

“I ended up interning at a custom-home builder in Mankato,” Mensing says. “I worked in the office doing drafting and design and found out I really did not like being behind a desk.”

He decided to trade his desk job for a chance to work on site framing houses, doing trim work and installing windows.

The next stop on his journey was getting a job with Holtmeier Construction.

Based in Mankato, Mensing notes Holtmeier is a heavy construction contractor who has a solid reputation for the work they do and the way they go about doing it.

“Joe (Holtmeier) was good to work for,”

Mensing comments. “He reminds his employees to be considerate and to realize they are inconveniencing people when they have to dig up their yard during street construction so be sure to be understanding, polite and respectful.”

Working for Holtmeier brought Mensing back to his hometown for awhile.

“I was the pipe layer for the Sailor Street Project in Blue Earth a few years ago,” he notes.

Mensing worked for Holtmeier until October of 2021 and then went out on his own.

“I started with a skid-steer loader doing side jobs on weekends,” he says.

However, his business has grown a bit since last October.

His fleet of construction equipment now consists of two full-size excavators, one mini excavator, a bulldozer, two dump trucks, two skid steer loaders and a lowboy semi-trailer to transport his large pieces of machinery. Mensing also is equipped with various other pieces of equipment, such as packers he needs to complete the work he is hired to do.

His business is based in Blue Earth.

“I purchased the former John Deere building, where Detke-Morbac was located, from Bob Weerts,” Mensing explains. “Although the majority of my jobs have been in the Mankato area, it was hard to find an available building. If you did find one, the cost to purchase it was considerably higher than buildings located away from the Mankato area.”

Originally, he was working on equipment at his father’s shop out on the farm.

“With the size of my equipment and the farming equipment, things got crowded real fast,” he remarks. “The building I purchased is solid and in real good shape. It has plenty of room.”

In fact, it has enough space to make Mensing consider renting part of the building out for storage.

“I’m thinking about it.” he mentions. “It doesn’t look like it would be too hard to separate some space on the east end of the building to make things work.”

Mensing says he began moving into the building on Feb. 1 but the closing was not until April 15.

The purchase of the building not only provided Mensing with a place to work on and maintain his equipment, it also came with ready-made office space.

“As much as I would love to spend all of my time working in the excavator, I still need to make time to get office work done,” he comments.

Mensing, who is single, says sometimes those office hours don’t come until late in the evening, long after the machines have been shut off for the day.

“You do what you have to do,” he notes.

Mensing Construction has four employees besides the owner.

“My dad will also help out sometimes,” Mensing adds. “I also try and help him out on the farm but I wasn’t able to assist him much this past spring.”

A big reason Mensing was not able to help his father is because he is busy running his own business.

“My goal was to get into all three types of work – private, commercial and public,” he explains. “I want to be diversified so if, for instance, the market for building new houses dries up, I still have commercial and public work to keep me going.”

The private work he does involves digging basements for new homes as well as laying sewer and water pipe and performing other site preparation tasks.

“On the commercial side, we did the work to get the sites ready for the new Scooter’s Coffee shops in Mankato and Albert Lea,” he says. “On the public side, we will be laying over 10,000 feet of a big, main tile line for Martin and Faribault County.”

Mensing splits his employees into two crews and states he may have to consider hiring a secretary at some point to help him keep up.

“I want to plan for steady growth but I don’t want to overextend myself,” he cautions. “I still do small jobs, especially for the people who helped me get started.”

While other businesses struggle to find employees who are willing to work, that has not been the case for Mensing.

“We live in a rural area and these kids know how to work,” he shares. “It gets tougher to find people willing to work the closer you get to Mankato and the Cities.”

He explains he is working on being a better employer.

“Holtmeier runs very efficiently,” Mensing says. “I am trying to teach our employees to operate in the same way and I think I have gotten better at it.”

He has a new business, has had to deal with large fuel price increases and learn how to manage not only his business, but also the people who work for him.

But, he is enjoying the challenge and trying to get better every day while remembering another piece of advice his father has shared with him.

“Dad has always told me you can do anything you want if you are willing to work for it,” Mensing says. “That is what I am trying to do.”