GALLOPING SWEDE LLC
Matthew Thurston, the owner of GSC, has 12+ years of experience in the construction industry. From being a licensed Home Depot building contractor to building multi-story Scribed log homes in the mountains of Montana to managing multi-million dollar development projects in a superintendent role, he has a multifaceted skill set in the building industry.
GSC Performs most of the stages of your project in-house. What we do not do in house, we have relationships with consistent, qualified subcontractors.
GSC can help with every stage of your project from permitting and planning, to ensuring your property is properly and legally set up for your project, to tacking on that last piece of trim or pounding in that last fence post.
Our Log building operation is 100% in-house. Our logs come from the Forests of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. They get trucked to our home base just North of Billings, where we either mill, or shape them by hand to prep for any type of project. From round-log Cabins to wide-span structural timber trusses, our logs get put to use in various ways. Generally our log projects are built at our home base, then disassembled and trucked to the jobsite and reassembled. This process limits on site time and ensures that the proper time and care of the logs can be taken during the initial stacking.
Our desire to build with logs comes from a love of the mountain west and ties us to our old Swedish heritage. Log construction dates back over a thousand years to Sweden and Norway. Log building allows us to tie that heritage to our love of the West and continue the legacy of the log cabin and how it helped the pioneers settle the American West. We take pride in continuing this legacy.
Why Galloping Swede?
The name Galloping Swede comes from several Generations back. Among some of the first of our family to make the journey from Sweden to the United States in hopes of a better life was Hugo Aronson. After thousands of miles of open ocean, Ellis Island, more miles of riding boxcars, and many adventures in between, he ended up in Columbus, MT. He decided to call Montana home after a brakeman kicked him off the train. He learned to speak English, worked on ranches and farms, served in WW I for the United States, obtained his nickname The Galloping Swede for his hustle in the oil fields, built several businesses and served as the 14th Governor of Montana. He sponsored his nephew Sven Johanson who also built a life in the oil fields of Montana and Wyoming as a general contractor specializing in trucking. Sven settled in the American West, a long ways from his home in Sweden and raised a great family. Sven would be the great Granddad of the current owner of Galloping Swede LLC, still operating as a general contractor in Montana today.
