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In 2020, with time on his hands during the COVID pandemic, 14-year-old Trevor Wright bought his first welder and learned to use it with help from his grandfather, Mitchell Wright. Within a year, he began working with Nick Taliaferro at Taliaferro Fence Company, bought his first skid steer and launched his own business, Wright Welding & Ag Services.
A member of the Future Farmers of America (FFA), his business has not only been very successful but has earned honors, including the California FFA’s 2024 Star in Agribusiness and 2025 Agricultural Mechanics Design & Fabrication Proficiency awards. The latter honor has qualified him as one of four national finalists for the FFA’s American Star in Agribusiness Award, whose winner will be announced in October.
The agribusiness award recognizes students who own their businesses but are not raising food or livestock. There are 1.27 million FFA members, according to Hollister High Ag teacher Grace Erickson, so being one of four finalists across the country, she said, is “pretty darned significant.”
“I think he’s the best of the best,” Erickson said. “Every person who has seen Trevor’s application and his record book looks at it twice and says, ‘Is this legit?’ But he is 100% legitimate.”
Wright began helping his older sister raise her 4-H cattle when he was four. At nine, he was ready to show his first animal, a steer, and continued with goats and steers for the rest of his time with the organization. At 15, he was a 4-H Youth Ambassador, helping out at the San Benito County Fair.
Wright used the money he had raised through selling his animals to finance his first welder. His father, Mark Wright, helped him buy his skid steer, and he has added equipment steadily since. He said for the first two years, he was just breaking even, but has earned enough to pay off about 90% of the approximately $350,000 he has invested in his job.
“You have to have the right equipment,” Wright said. “You can borrow equipment as much as you want, but if you want to be profitable, you have to start buying your own.”
As he expanded the tools of his trade over the last four years, his business has expanded. What began as a welding operation now encompasses agricultural fencing in barbed wire and pipe, corral and animal shelter building, dirt and excavation work, and hauling of sand, gravel, aggregate and equipment. He also handles all the hauling for Taliaferro Fence Company.
“When I was 17,” Wright said, “I thought, ‘Yeah, this is what I’m going to do.’ I had put a certain amount of money into it, so there’s no turning back. You just expand and you work from it and you keep on going.”
Wright said he currently gets around 50 jobs a year, which is enough to keep him working every single day. His newest venture is selling materials like pipe, which grew from his welding work and the contacts he has made over the last few years.
“I’ve been lucky to have met up with a lot of great material salesmen,” Wright said. “I get deals on material, and I turn around and resell it. No one sells pipe in the area. You have to drive hours for it. Now you can buy it from me.”
Wright credits his success to having had “the blessing of learning from the best of the best in California,” and he is hoping to expand to one or two crews, which would allow him to do less welding himself and more planning.
“I can teach anyone how to weld,” he said, “but the hardest part is teaching people how to design a project. Certain things will work on one job but not another. You have to improvise, and that’s something that is hard to teach people.
Wright has gained most of his customers through word of mouth, relying on the work he has done as his best advertisement.
“I did a little bit of posting on Facebook,” he said, “But that didn’t bring in too much work. Word of mouth is best, because that’s real world. People who have seen what you have done know how good your product is.”
Hollister resident John Sicily is one of those customers. After seeing some of Wright’s work, he hired him to do a $20,000 fencing project. He had been struck by the quality and craftsmanship of the work and, on discovering it was Wright, looked for other jobs he had done.
“I was impressed—very impressed,” he said. “He did some great work, and I loved it. I was surprised how young he was. He drove up in a new truck with all nice equipment. I thought, ‘This young man’s got his stuff together.’”
Trevor Wright can be contacted at 831-902-8979 or trevorwright270@gmail.com.
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