What a finished DBE personal narrative looks like

I. Executive Summary

[Firm name redacted] Paving, LLC is a licensed asphalt paving and sealcoating subcontractor in [County], [State]. I hold a Class B contractor license, an MSHA surface certification and 17 years of field experience. In 2025 the firm completed 31 jobs with a crew of six and revenue of $612,000. Comparable paving subcontractors in this market with the same license class and years in business report revenue of $1.4 million to $2.1 million.

This narrative documents why that gap exists. It traces a pattern of barriers from a childhood household that fell below the poverty line, through schooling I could not finish, to an employer who paid me less than peers doing the same work, to lenders and sureties that priced my firm above the market. These are not perceived slights. Each one is dated, quantified and supported by the records listed in Section VII.

II. Childhood and Family Economic Background

Objective basis. I grew up in a farmworker family in [County], a rural county where about one household in four lived below the poverty line during my childhood, roughly twice the state rate. My parents picked and packed produce on seasonal contracts, and Spanish was the only language spoken at home; I entered kindergarten with limited English and was in remedial reading through the fourth grade. Those three conditions, a farmworker household, a high-poverty rural county and limited English at home, are the identifiable basis for the disadvantage described in this narrative, and each of the barriers below traces back to them.

In March 1994 the [Company] packing shed where my father worked cut its second shift, and his hours fell from 40 to 22 a week; my mother’s field work ran only from May to October. Our household income that year, for a family of five, was about $16,800, roughly $1,700 under the federal poverty line for 1994. We moved twice in the next 18 months, once after an eviction notice dated [redacted].

The practical effect was that I started working at fourteen, first bagging feed at the co-op and later on a road crew during summers. The money went to the household. There were no savings, no vehicle I could count on and no adult in the family who had finished high school or read English well enough to help with a form.

III. Educational Barriers and Impact

I left [Name] High School in the spring of my junior year, 1999, to work full time after my father was injured on the job and the family lost his income for seven months. I earned a GED in 2003. I was accepted to the two-year civil engineering technology program at [Community College] in 2004 but could not enroll: tuition and fees were $3,240 a year, and the financial aid office required a parent’s tax return my family had not filed. I did not have $3,240 and I did not have a co-signer.

Peers who finished that program went on to estimator and project-engineer roles that paid $58,000 to $72,000 within five years. I stayed on the crew. The difference in earnings over the ten years that followed is about $190,000, using the wage records in Section VII.

IV. Employment History and Workplace Barriers

From 2005 to 2016 I worked for [Employer], a regional paving contractor, moving from laborer to screed operator to foreman. In 2011 I was told I was “next in line” for a superintendent position. The position was filled in June 2011 by a person hired from outside with four fewer years of experience and no paving license. My pay stubs from 2012 to 2015, compared with the pay-rate schedule I obtained during a 2016 wage dispute, show that I was paid $4.10 an hour less than the two other foremen running crews of the same size. Over those four years the difference came to about $34,100 in base pay, before overtime.

When I raised the disparity in writing in March 2016, my crew was reassigned to night milling work within three weeks and my hours were cut. I left in September 2016 and started my own firm, in part because I could not see a path forward as an employee.

V. Business Formation and Systematic Barriers

I formed [Firm name redacted] Paving, LLC in October 2016 with $11,500 in savings and a used paver bought at auction. The barriers moved with me.

Incident 1. [City] Public Works, Bid No. [redacted], April 2019. My firm submitted the low bid of $184,600 on a parking-lot resurfacing package; the second bid was $203,900. The award went to the second bidder. The written reason was “insufficient demonstrated capacity,” although the package required no bonding and my firm had completed four larger private jobs in the prior year. The lost contract represented about 30 percent of my revenue that year.

Incident 2. [General contractor], [Highway] overlay subcontract, August 2022. I was asked to price the asphalt scope, submitted $412,000 and was told verbally that I had the job. Two weeks later the prime said it had “gone another direction” and awarded the scope to a firm whose bid, obtained later through a public-records request, was $438,500. No reason was given in writing. That job would have doubled my firm’s 2022 revenue.

These are two of six documented instances between 2019 and 2024 in which my firm was the low or near-low bidder and was not awarded the work. Together they total $1.27 million in bids that went to higher bidders.

VI. Economic Disadvantage Documentation

A. Access to capital. In February 2021 I applied to [Bank] for a $150,000 equipment line to buy a second paver. The firm had four years of profitable returns and I had a personal credit score of 712. The bank offered $60,000 at 13.9 percent with a personal guarantee and a lien on my home. The same bank’s posted rate for equipment lines that month was 6.75 percent. Two comparable paving firms in the county obtained lines of $200,000 and $240,000 that year at 7 to 8 percent with no home lien. The rate difference on the $60,000 I did take costs my firm about $4,300 a year in added interest.

B. Bonding. My surety caps my single-project bond at $250,000 and my aggregate at $450,000, despite no claims in eight years. Contractors with similar revenue and history in my market carry $1 million single-project limits. The cap keeps me out of roughly 40 percent of the public paving work bid in the county each year.

C. Type and magnitude of the harm. The harm is of two types: revenue my firm could not earn and costs it pays above the market. In dollars, it is about $1.27 million in bids lost to higher bidders between 2019 and 2024; about $4,300 a year in added interest on the equipment line; and roughly 40 percent of the county’s public paving work that my bonding cap keeps me from bidding at all. The result is a firm that earned $612,000 in 2025 while paving firms with the same license class, equipment and years in business, run by owners without the conditions described in Section II, earn $1.4 million to $2.1 million a year. The gap is the arithmetic of the barriers above.

VII. Supporting Documentation

The following records are enclosed and referenced above:

• Personal and business federal tax returns, 2022 through 2024; 1994 household income affidavit and the eviction notice dated [redacted]
• [Community College] acceptance letter (2004) and the financial-aid file note
• [Employer] pay stubs 2012 through 2015, the 2016 pay-rate schedule and the March 2016 written complaint
• [City] Public Works bid tabulation, April 2019, and the award letter stating the reason
• Public-records response for the August 2022 overlay subcontract showing the awarded bid
• [Bank] commitment letter, February 2021, and the bank’s posted rate sheet for that month
• Current surety capacity letter and the Personal Net Worth statement on the current DOT form

VIII. Conclusion

Taken together, these records show a pattern, not a run of bad luck: a farmworker household in a high-poverty county that started under the poverty line, schooling cut short by money, wages held below peers for the same work, contracts awarded to higher bidders without a written reason, and capital and bonding priced above what my record supports. Each event has a date, a figure and a document, and each traces back to the conditions named in Section II.

Certification would not give my firm a preference. It would let my firm compete for work that the barriers above have kept out of reach.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.