Mathews Sewer System in Green Isle, Minnesota, has built a thriving business by referrals from happy customers. Word gets around fast that they do a great job, and leave an exceptionally clean jobsite.
Larry Mathews and his wife, Jan, launched their company, more than 30 years ago. Today, their son Sheldon has become the third crew member. Their Kobelco SK160LC is the latest in a long line of Kobelco equipment they’ve owned.
“We do mostly rural and town jobs, like digging basements, water and sewer systems,” says Larry. Most of it is private work. As a secondary service they also have a truck for pumping out septic tanks.
“We’ve always had a reputation for the cleanliness and quality of our work,” Jan says. That reputation has earned them the trust of faithful customers who pass along the Mathews name to friends and neighbors.
Larry says, “People get to know you over the years. Homeowners don’t want dirt laying all over creation when you leave. We don’t do things like that, although most of the contractors around here leave dirt all over the place!”
He adds, “The competition probably does it faster than we do, but they don’t do as nice a job. When we’re done putting in a septic mound, we put the sod on it. Most of them just get the work done as fast as they can. Slam, bang and they’re gone. When they leave, the mound looks like the ocean on a windy day.”
Replacing a private septic system takes some sensitivity to the customer’s interests, Jan says. “Most contractors leave all the dirty leftover rock (from the previous system) laying someplace on the lawn – and the homeowner has to try to get rid of it. We clean it up, and that’s not easy to do. We use a skid loader and a lot of handwork.”
Zero tail swing compact excavator
Mathews Sewer Systems currently use two Kobelco machines for excavation work.
The Kobelco SK 45SR compact excavator was a perfect fit, they discovered, for work in a nearby village where 103 connections were needed for a new sewer service.
Larry says, “There were a lot of trees on the yards, and no place to stand. We used the big excavator out on the street, but there was no way we could have it up by the house. There just wasn’t that kind of space.
“We use it a lot for digging up water lines. We do a lot of trenching, too. We’d do 600 to 700 hours a year on that one.”
The rubber-track machine is only 77 inches wide and 9’ 4” long. The zero-tail-swing feature allows the 45SR-2 to easily move and work in tight places without damage to the machine or the job site. The boom also can swing 58 degrees to the right and 73 degrees to the left, helping the operator dig around obstacles and against walls.
“You can dig right alongside a house! That is slick!” Larry says. “You can go straight down beside a basement wall, and still swing the dirt all the way up and all the way out because the back end won’t hit the house.
“You can have the track right up to the house, move the boom over hydraulically to dig straight in front of the track, and still swing around. The back end does not go over the track base at all!”
The little excavator had other surprises for the veteran contractor. It didn’t jerk him around.
“It’s just the smoothest operating machine,” Larry says. “There’s no jerking. They’re well balanced, and the back end is short. I don’t know where they get the weight so they don’t pull down or jerk up in the back, but they don’t, not a bit!”
Dumping the dirt on an existing lawn still would have been messy. Mathews has avoided that potential problem, too. They brought in a dumpster on a skid loader and filled it as the hole and trench progressed. The job site stayed clean – and so did their reputation.
Three excavator companies offered services in that town that year. Larry says, “We did 67 jobs there. We could have done more.”
The big one
For bigger work, like an 18-foot hole in the street or an 1,800-gallon concrete septic tank or a big basement on a narrow lot, Mathews relies on their Kobelco SK 160LC excavator. He’s tested Kobelco’s claim that nothing in its class out-lifts the SK 160LC, front or side. It’s also a quiet, comfortable ride. Visibility is excellent and the controls are convenient to help reduce operator fatique.
For sheer volume, he says, about ten “heaping scoops” with his 42” bucket on this machine will fill a 14-yard dump truck. As a loader, he says, it “does excellent work.”
Sometimes, when he was putting in those 67 sewer lines, the connections at the street were 18 feet deep. The big excavator was just what he needed. It has a vertical wall digging depth of nearly 20 feet.
“Another thing we do with the SK160LC is to lift septic tanks into a hole for a septic system with an iron frame. Some of them are 12 feet long, six feet wide and six deep. We can pick up an 1,800-gallon tank, with the top on, and swing it right on in. The SK160LC doesn’t have any problems at all with that,” he says. “You’re coming on the side with all the weight. That’s about the smoothest machine there is.”
Maximum lift capacity, on the side, is 8,100 pounds.
Digging wide basements on lots that are very, very narrow is one of the more challenging jobs, he adds. The site plan allows six feet between the property line and basement wall on each side. To provide workers access for laying blocks and tile, the hole must be two feet wider all around.
It’s not beyond reach for the 36,000-pound excavator.
Its reach at ground is 30’ 7” with the standard arm, and it has an industry-leading breakout force of 24,800 pounds.
“Those are pretty tight areas to work in, for a fairly good-sized machine,” Larry says. Still, he stays inside the property line, gets the dirt out and leaves the site clean when he’s finished.
Good PR
Having good relations with his customers and his equipment supplier still goes a long way in a fast-changing world.
Jan and Larry like the Kobelco line of excavators but their loyalty is to “the salesmen and the dealer.” That’s why they’ve been faithful to their Kobelco dealer for many years.
“I’ve had good luck. I’ve never had any major problems with Kobelco machines,” says Larry. “The first year, they change the filters and if something isn’t working quite right, they’ll just bring another machine out and pick this one up and have it for a week or two. You have something to use and it doesn’t cost you a dime. They were just out here, less than a month ago. They pulled the filters all the way, and the hydraulic oil. And, they’re pretty clean guys.”
Especially in the dirt business, Jan suggests, it’s important to be clean. They clean and degrease machines on a weekly schedule.
“People like cleanliness,” she says. “It means a lot to have clean equipment. The equipment is clean when we drive up to a place and it’s clean when we leave.”
Jan’s secret for keeping the Mathews equipment looking new is old-fashioned – a coat of wax.
“It’s a lot of fun, waxing one of those excavators,” she says. “We wax the smaller ones before they come home. I try to wax the big ones about every two years, but I’m getting too old for this stuff. It takes two days, at least.”