Aluminum firm tries to foil market

Crews at Mullet's Aluminum Products in Sarasota are building bridges to new revenues.

Real bridges, that is, not a symbolic attempt to overcome the recession. The bridge work is fabrication and installation of aluminum pedestrian bridges, like one it recently completed at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, right. It's a big step for the well-established vinyl siding and window installation firm that construction entrepreneur and carpenter Butch Mullet founded in 1978.

“When people think of Mullet's, they think of screen enclosures or gutters,” says Marketing Director Nate Yoder. “So people are kind of blown away with our elaborate (bridge) systems.”

The firm first got into the specialty four years ago, when it built two pedestrian bridges for MetWest International, a mixed-use office park in Tampa's Westshore business district. One bridge in that project, fabricated in pieces in its Sarasota shop, stretched 110 feet long.

All of the firm's bridge work is fabricated and assembled in Sarasota. says Yoder. Then the bridge is transferred to the final destination for installation. That's an integral component in the strategy because it requires minimal interruptions at the job site, Yoder says. The 73-foot bridge installed in early March at Sarasota Memorial, for instance, took just 45 minutes to set into place.

Yoder says Mullet's Aluminum, with 160 employees, has contracts pending for five more pedestrian bridge projects in Florida, and he expects to expand the offerings nationally within a year. Most competitors, he says, build these kinds of bridges with concrete and steel, which can cost significantly more.
“This is just the beginning,” Yoder tells Coffee Talk. “This is such a specialized market. There are very few companies in the U.S. capable of what we are doing.”