Sheiks and kings come to David Chambers all wanting the same thing: a really, really big flagpole.
By big, we're talking flagpoles taller than any building in San Diego. Flagpoles that support 800-pound flags that cover two-thirds of a football field. Flagpoles so large that when a person climbs to the top from the inside, it takes about an hour.
How a Mt. Carmel High School graduate ended up building the world's largest flagpoles in places such as Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Turkmenistan is a tale straight from American Entrepreneurship 101.
Chambers, 44, grew up in Rancho Peñasquitos and always got great grades, said his mother, Kay. Nobody could have anticipated what Chambers would go on to do – because nobody in the world has done what he has – but she always knew Kay Chambers boy would be a success.
In the past few years, Chambers' company, Trident Support Corp., based in Dubai, has built the four tallest free-standing flagpoles in the world.
His client list is growing as a veritable flagpole frenzy has overtaken the Middle East.
While on vacation at home last month, Chambers was preparing for his next project.
“I've got to run back,” he said. “I've got a big pole waiting for me.”
That would be in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The pole will be 532 feet tall – 32 feet taller than San Diego's tallest building, One America Plaza.
DAVID CHAMBERS
David Chambers' company built a flagpole in Aqaba, Jordan, that is equipped with military-grade cameras to monitor Israel. The 426-foot flagpole was once the world's tallest.
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“It's been a wild ride,” Chambers said of his unusual occupation.
The ride began when he went to work for a defense contractor in Temecula that sold spare parts for Navy ships. Many countries have U.S.-built ships in their fleets, and Chambers rose to lead the company's international division.
In 1997, Chambers left his position to work for a sheik in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, still in the shipping parts field. He moved his wife and two sons to Dubai.
In the late 1990s, the sheik went to Mexico on vacation, where he saw a series of 200-foot flagpoles across the country.
When he got back home, the sheik took Chambers aside.
“He looked at me and said, 'Make this happen in Abu Dhabi,' ” Chambers said.
Although he doesn't have an engineering background, Chambers did the research and hired the right people to build a 404-foot flagpole.
A short time later, Chambers, with the sheik's blessing, left to form his own company. Chambers had seen how his product would have wide appeal.
“The Arabs always have to outdo each other,” he said.
Trident Support Corp., with annual sales of about $20 million, is the world's only business that erects huge flagpoles, which it calls Monumental Flagpoles. It is also the largest supplier of normal-sized flagpoles in the Middle East. A division of the company produces other items such as sand cruisers, which are advanced versions of dune buggies, and cell phone towers.
Chambers employs 15 people, and subcontracts the rest of the work.
The flagpoles are constructed using segments made of rolled steel that are stacked by cranes. The most recent has diameter of 15 feet at the base.
The poles cost millions of dollars, but oil-rich countries barely blink at the price, Chambers said. The pole he is making in Baku has a price tag of about $4 million. It will have a laser projection system attached to the top, installed by a separate company for $2 million, that will produce nightly light shows.
A pole Chambers' company built in Aqaba, Jordan, once the world's tallest at 426 feet, is equipped with military-grade cameras to monitor neighboring Israel. The world's tallest flagpole is a 436-footer in Turkmenistan, which Chambers finished in June. It will hold the record until his Baku project – 96 feet taller – is finished.
Every country that comes to Chambers wants a flagpole bigger than the last one he built. He now plans on each new pole being only a few feet taller than his previous one because at some point it will be impossible to keep going higher, unless helicopters, instead of cranes, are used for stacking the segments.
Chambers and his mother hope that a company or government in the United States will want its own world-record flagpole, allowing Chambers to move home where his family includes two brothers and two sisters.
“My ultimate goal is to come back home and build the world's largest flagpole in the United States,” he said. “Then I will hang up my tool belt.”
Recently, Chambers' father, Robert, asked him to help put up a 20-foot flagpole in front of the house on Wye Street where Chambers grew up.
“I had to read the instructions,” he said. “I've never done anything that small.”
J. Harry Jones: (760) 737-7579; jharry.jones@uniontrib.com
