Left to right: Peter Caruso Paving Founder/President Peter Caruso II poses with sons and successor Presidents Peter Caruso III and John Caruso by a road grader on a housing development site during the mid-1960s.

Peter J. Caruso & Sons, Inc. completed parking lot repairs, milling and pavement resurfacing at a Best Buy store in Robinson Township, PA.

When first-generation American Peter Caruso II embarked on his third career venture, he could not have foretold its eventual role in shaping the landscape and way of life in southwestern Pennsylvania. Following unsatisfying stints as a grocer and coal truck driver, he secured a $500 bank loan to get into the asphalt business. In 1948, Peter Caruso Paving was launched on the family homestead near Pittsburgh, in a community of other immigrant families from Calabria, Italy. Later renamed Caruso Paving, the commercial asphalt paving and excavation company continuously grew its scope, size and capabilities from its humble early roots.

Now a fixture in Pittsburgh for 72 years, today’s third-generation Peter J. Caruso & Sons, Inc. offers comprehensive commercial asphalt capabilities, which span the life cycle from paving and sealing to maintenance and repair and to resurfacing or replacement. It also provides site development services, including demolition, stormwater drainage, utility installation, grading and landscaping. The company is now helmed by Peter (Pete) Caruso IV, who succeeded his father as President in 2012.

Why asphalt? Caruso says his grandfather wanted to build and likely recognized asphalt as a less-crowded field in their Italian community, which already had many tradesmen doing cement and brick work. Slowly and surely, and with the ability to purchase some materials, he began to build a clientele. Two of the founder’s sons (Peter IV’s dad, Peter Caruso III, and his uncle, John Caruso), joined the company at a young age and, along with other early employees, contributed to its year-over-year growth. It expanded from 8-10 employees by the early 1960s, to a peak of about 100 in the mid-’90s based on a solid track record and many multigenerational customers.

Today, Peter J. Caruso & Sons is thriving with close to 70 employees—a conscientious, skilled workforce with multiple certifications. The bonded-and-insured union company is prequalified by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation as well as other government agencies and various major industrial corporations. Many of its staff members have obtained technical training from the Northeast Center of Excellence for Pavement Technology (NECEPT). The company has no debt and owns all of its equipment, including about 175 trucks and pieces of heavy equipment. Its management team boasts more than 200 years of combined industry experience.

In addition, the firm is actively engaged and represented in the industry. Caruso serves on the Board of Governors of the Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania (CAWP), an affiliate of the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC).

Integral Part of Suburban Building Boom

During much of the company’s history, it was literally on the ground floor in building roadways, parking lots and utilities across the region.

“Way back in the day, building new was the primary focus. America was growing and expanding all through those decades and there was a lot of opportunity,” Caruso says.

The company was involved with developers and general contractors throughout the region who were putting together strip malls, site developments and chain restaurants. They were part of shopping center, retail, commercial and industrial projects. They worked on all the major power plants in the area, three U.S. Steel plants and all the other local steel mills active until the 1980s and ‘90s.

Long-term Relationships Rule

Caruso says the firm has supported U.S. Steel for some 40 years, pivoting in recent years from primarily site development and building new roads and paved surfaces to maintenance and rehabilitation projects. Other long-term relationships have endured as customers have grown, expanded and required upkeep of their existing paved infrastructure.

For example, there have been innumerable projects for the Allegheny County Airport Authority since the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport opened in 1952, spanning both site work and paving. The company also performed projects for ancillary businesses at the airport, such as those in food service and aircraft maintenance. As today’s Pittsburgh International Airport has expanded, Peter J. Caruso & Sons has completed numerous parking additions—some for as many as 4,000 vehicles.

Marquee Sports Stadiums and Power-shopping Projects

Among the firm’s landmark projects, Caruso cites its infrastructure and roadwork contributions at Pittsburgh’s two professional sports and entertainment meccas, which debuted six months apart in 2001. Peter J. Caruso & Sons performed all of the excavating, site work and parking lot paving at the 68,000-seat Heinz Field football stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers and University of Pittsburgh’s Pitt Panthers, and at PNC Park, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 38,000-seat baseball stadium. Notably, the firm also helped build all the roadways on Pittsburgh’s North Shore between and surrounding the two stadiums, which are concrete-topped asphalt. Additionally, at Heinz Field, the company line-striped six parking lots. Beyond the obvious importance of these stadiums to sports fans, Caruso is proud of the role his family firm played in transformative projects undertaken by the city to ignite development of Pittsburgh’s now-burgeoning North Side.

Peter J. Caruso & Sons was also tapped for Tanger Outlets in Washington County that opened in 2008, paving some 4,000 parking spots and the roadway system leading to the center.

While its past focus was new construction, today the company is active primarily in the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure. The company extends the service life of its clients’ large paving investments with protective resurfacing treatments, such as slurry sealing and asphalt microsurfacing. The latter is particularly valuable in heavy-duty, high-traffic applications thanks to its greater durability and rapid curing time.

Growing Up in the Family Business

Caruso’s sister and Co-Owner Sandy Caruso also worked her way up the business for nearly as long as Peter IV. She has worked on crews, assisted supervisors and mastered blueprints, surveys and job logistics—synchronizing all the trucks, materials and myriad projects. She also oversees insurance, billing, job budgets and cost control. Several other key employees have grown up with the company: Both the shop manager and general superintendent have been there more than 40 years.

“Our business is kind of simple,” Caruso explains. “We don’t build bridges or buildings or anything complicated with fancy roofs or facades. There are probably just a few ways to do it right and a lot of ways to do it wrong.

“The world is full of people who do what we do,” he adds. “The only thing that can set you apart is the way you provide your services. What we’ve always done is focus our attention on customers to make sure we’re as responsive a construction partner as possible.”

Caruso further explains, “If you’re removing and redoing the existing pavement across the whole front façade of a hospital, everything has to be stepped out to make sure all emergency and delivery traffic can get through. If you’re working on a factory or a plant, you can’t shut the loading docks down. You have to maintain your customer’s business while doing your work, whether you’re paving a fast-food restaurant, a Sam’s Club or a mill site. It requires a lot of upfront planning around all their functions. Nothing beats experience.”

Schooled in Honesty and Integrity

Caruso believes that the company’s reputation as one of the Pittsburgh region’s preeminent construction partners is based on a steel-clad commitment to high-quality, fairly priced work, keeping one’s promises and always doing what is right.

“Over time, your reputation and everything you do stacks up behind you, and strong values were always instilled in our family,” he says. “As the company expanded, it was imperative that we always maintain our reputation. It’s still that way today.

“When I take new hires through orientation, I tell them nobody has the right to do anything to disgrace the company name in any shape or form,” he continues. “From the top down, everybody has to have the same type of ethics when it involves the public, customers or the proper way to do things. With the internet today, you can do one thing wrong, and it can be across the world in five seconds. It doesn’t take any time at all to crush your reputation, but it takes forever to build it.”

On the flip side, Caruso takes pride that the company has been able to provide a good living for many people in the area over its seven decades and that it has been entrusted with that responsibility.

Caruso summarizes his philosophy succinctly: “If you can surround yourself with good people, then you’ll do good things—if you have good intentions.”