003 - Nathan Husbands
All Things Road
A profile of Nathan Husbands, asphalt paver, SECON
Portrait of Nathan Husbands in Las Vegas, Nevada at ConExpo 2026. Shot on 35mm Kodak Tri-X 400 film with Leica R6.2.
"The first job I remember doing for my dad, I was probably seven years old. I asked him if I could wash the roller drums for $5, just the asphalt roller drums that are already dirty, already going to get dirty, and he gave me $5 to clean a roller drum.
And I've loved money ever since."
Nathan Husbands has been in asphalt his whole life, starting with his dad's paving company in Salt Lake City, working summers as a kid before going full-time after high school. A few years ago he left the family business and moved on to paving roads in Alaska with SECON.
Why Asphalt
The money is part of it, and Nathan doesn't pretend otherwise.
"I probably stayed in it for the pay compared to other colleagues and friends that I had going to college, comparing it at the times and watching our pay growth kind of go up."
But the pay alone doesn't explain a guy who loves cars, motorcycles, and has spent his whole life thinking about roads.
"People don't realize how big of a necessity the interstate system and all different roads are. But to be able to contribute to just building roads is something that I love. I mean, I love cars, I love motorcycles. I'm always on the road trying to go fast. Being able to connect people from point A to point B in something that they like to drive on… just all things ROAD, I love. I love making them, I love riding on them and everything in between."
The Grind
Asphalt is seasonal. Six months of 40 to 80 hour weeks, Saturdays and Sundays included, twelve hours a day. The paycheck is real. So is the grind.
"Saturday and Sundays when you got to go work 12 hours, it gets a little hard."
The grind only works if the reward is worth it. For Nathan, that means the off season, and spending what he earned on the things he actually cares about.
"Finding something that you love to do to spend your money on is what makes it worth it."
The industry has its other pressures too, and Nathan doesn't shy away from them.
"In the asphalt industry, there's always interesting people running around and it's easy to kind of lose yourself, with so many people offering you, honestly, drugs, drinking, whatever you want. But knowing what you want and what you stand for, and being able to at the end of the day buckle down and just show up to work to make that money and go home and stay focused. That's what makes it worth it."
The Bigger Picture
The work that means the most to Nathan isn't solo.
"Coming together as a crew and always being able to pull off something big and hard, it feels good as an accomplishment. When you come together as a team and create cool stuff, build cool stuff that you didn't think was possible, but you all came together, it's really rewarding and it's worth working hard for."
And for anyone who's ever sat in traffic cursing at the cones and the delays:
"Building a road is a very long process, and the pavement is obviously the final step. From the ground up, from pipes all the way up to the top, there is so much engineering and planning involved to be able to run an efficient city. It is frustrating at times when roads are always shut down, things are always a little bit slower, but knowing that all that stuff comes together for everybody's betterment is what's worth it to wait at the end."
For Nathan, it's always been about the payoff, for the crew, for the city, and yeah, for himself. He figured that out when he was seven years old washing that roller drum for 5 bucks.
Nathan Husbands is an asphalt paver at SECON, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, currently working in Alaska.
