Honduran Construction Companies

The three main jobs for a Honduran are working as a Security Guard, a farm field hand or as a construction worker. While their are various wealthy construction companies there are also many neighborhood construction companies. These small time "companies" usually consist of at least 3 to 5 albaniles (construction workers) who have very little access to capital to invest into their business. Instead they must do with what is easily at hand. The results are varied, but my favorite example of Honduran ingenuity is the two wheeled, energy efficient work vehicle.

Hondurans do everything on a bicycle. They will pick up their two kids from school. They will modify them to create various business opportunities. Best of all they use them to deliver construction equipment and supplies to various job sites. On several occasions I have seen someone dragging 3 or 4 fourteen foot long segments of metal rebar on their bicycles. On one occasion the individual must have been nearly 6 miles from the nearest construction supply store.


Many neighborhood construction "companies" will contract themselves out for a job which will only make them a very marginal profit. In order to cut costs they will do whatever they can on the cheap. This means mixing all of the cement by hand, hand delivering any additional supplies from the store to their work site, as well as hauling around all of their construction supplies on the backs of their bicycles.

One Honduran construction worker makes my list of most ingenious businessmen.  To make his life easier, he retrofitted his bicycle. He attached a support system that would allow him to haul his wheelbarrow around behind him, giving his construction vehicle a very useful third wheel. He was last seen riding to work one morning with his wheelbarrow in tow. Inside the wheelbarrow were two bags of cement (nearly 90 pounds each), a shovel, a pickaxe, his machete cradled under his seat (like all true Hondurans carry their machetes), and his bucket of tools sandwiched firmly between his legs as he pedaled on down the highway.

Think about that the next time you complain about your own commute to work! Poverty often provides that important impetus to spur ones creativity (stay tuned for many more examples of the ingenuity of a real Hondurans).