During his sophomore year of high school, David decided he couldn’t teach those teachers of his anything else, so he left school and went to work. His first job was driving a 1968 Pete with a 300 Cummins and a 4+4 two-stick transmission, hauling “green chop” feed for Gary and Steve Van Hofwegen. A year later, at just 17 years old, he started hauling hay for Ray Vandenberg with a 1968 International truck and trailer and then a cabover Peterbilt truck and trailer, both equipped with two-stick transmissions. Hauling for Ray for about five years, in the summer of 1985, things started to get slow, and someone asked David if he could get them a load of hay, so he did. From there, it started to snowball, and David found himself “accidentally” in the hay buying, selling and trucking business. Running as D&J Viss Hay, over the next seven or eight years, he built that company up to seven trucks, 14 sets of hay trailers, and two hay squeezes. Then, at 29 years old, he decided to sell it all and move to Chelsea, Oklahoma, and start his own dairy there. Moving to Oklahoma in 1992, David used the proceeds from the sale of his hay trucking business as seed money to start his new dairy and formed D. Viss Cattle. Growing to 200 cows, which in that area at the time was a big dairy, this venture did not last long. Unfortunately, his dad became ill and needed help running his two dairies, so David shipped all his cows to his dad’s dairy, closed his operation in Oklahoma, and moved back to Arizona in 1994. Helping his father for a couple years, he eventually walked away and let one of his brothers take over the business. David’s father passed away the next year in 1997 at just 65 years old. Around that time, after building some pens at a local dairy, someone said to David, “I didn’t know you did that,” to which David replied, “I didn’t know I did either!” Again, one thing led to another, and before he knew it, he “accidentally” got into the dairy building business. Over the years, he has built nine complete dairies, from start to finish, and over 300 barns in California and Arizona. Peaking at 47 employees, this construction business is still in operation, but it was downsized significantly following the 2008 housing crash and subsequent recession. These days, it only has five employees, that mostly do repairs and small jobs. While the construction business was still booming, there became a need for a big truck to move their heavy equipment around, so David bought a 1999 Peterbilt 379 in 2003, which he still has today. At one point, the company had six trucks to haul materials and equipment, but 10-4 Magazine / June 2025 11
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