Max J. Kuney Co. began in 1930 with $40,000 and a desire by Max Kuney to be his own boss. Almost 70 years later, the family business has Max J. Kuney III as its president, and Max J. Kuney IV as a vice president. During those 70 years, the company has seen construction methods evolve from the use of horse-drawn tractors to diesel-powered excavators to today's state-of-the-art equipment, including pile-driving hammers that use environmentally-safe soy bean oil in place of standard oil

Max J. Kuney Co. specializes in bridges, earthquake retrofit, highway construction, noise walls and pile driving. The company has worked in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California and Alaska. Highway construction projects have ranged from building 19 miles of Alaskan highway in 1948, to building over 80 percent of the elevated freeway in Spokane in the 1960s, to constructing half of the bridge structures on Interstate 90 as it crosses Mercer Island.

In addition to highways, Kuney has constructed many buildings, including the Federal Reserve Building in Seattle, the Spokane County Jail, Spokane Opera House and the original Seattle-First National Bank in Spokane. Ironically, the beautiful marble building was torn down in 1981 by Kuney to make room for the new Seafirst Tower and parking garage. Kuney also drove 1,425 piles to support Safeco Field.

A feather in the company's cap is the award-winning Foss Waterway Bridge that is part of state Route 509 in Tacoma. It is only the 13th cable-stay bridge constructed in the country. Some of the projects currently under construction include several seismic retrofitting projects at Sea-Tac Airport, widening eight miles of state Route 520, building the new Nugents Bridge near Bellingham, driving piling for the new building at Saint George's School in Spokane, and reconstructing three miles of I-90 in Spokane.