We scheduled OSHA competent person training in Illinois for a large group of contractors and also that same week, training for Illinois American Water.  Unfortunately, during that week two workers were killed in trench accidents.  One died in a trench cave-in and the other was struck in the head with an excavator bucket and was killed instantly.

As we all know contractors now each other very well and everyone was aware of what had happened.  Needless to say we had their attention and it was a very somber but attentive group for training that week.

A few years ago a large municipality had workers in a trench without protection and an Aluminum Trench Shield on site.  OSHA caught them and since they had trench shoring but didn’t use it, they got a willful violation and cost them over $150,000 in fines.  The unnamed Municipality decided to buy mod  series shoring for each of their crews.  Our dealer decided to make a bad situation a little better for both and offered a package deal to the municipality.  He offered the shoring, a small trailer and a job box that they could bolt to the trailer.  They could keep their pins, keepers, slings etc. together and locked when not in use.  The unnamed municipality loved the idea and bought several.  That is thinking outside the “box”.

Imagine houses, trees, sidewalks, fractured clay, sticky clay, and glacial till. Add to that the challenge of minimizing the disturbance to the local area while boring a 48” pipe beneath the road. These and many other challenges are what Kandey Company, Inc. out of West Seneca New York is facing while completing the first of the multi-phase Parker-Fries Project.

The Parker-Fries Project is a major construction project in Tonawanda, New York. Theproject started in the summer of 2010 and will continue over the next 18 to 24 months.  It will replace more than 11,000 feet of aging and deteriorating sanitary sewer system line. The old sewer line has been a source of contention between the Town of Tonawanda and the state Department of Environmental Conservation, due in part, to the unfortunate instances in which the overflow has entered the storm water system, eventually ending up in nearby waterways. Read the rest of this entry »

What do you call a job that requires four different pipe jacking pits to install a new 72” sanitary sewer pipe?  Typically, this would be a standard job.  But what if that job required excavations that ranged from 20’ deep to 32’ deep, had an active 21” sanitary sewer line running through one of the pits, had a pond directly next to another of the pits, had a creek less than 12’ away, had a mix of sticky clay soil and running sand, had an apartment building nearby, and had a highly traveled road 15’ away? 

If you are Lowe Construction, with the help of Pro-Tec Equipments Slide Rail Shoring System, you would call it a successful job!   

Read the rest of this entry »

The Year That Was…

First and foremost, we at Pro-Tec Equipmet would like to say “Thank you!”  2010 ended up being a better year than we had thought it was going to be.  We honestly could not have do it without your support!

2010 was an interesting year for Pro-Tec Equipment.  As you are well aware, we consolidated our manufacturing arm and it is now under the AMI (Armstrong Manufacturing Inc.) banner.  Many of you voiced you concerns over this.  Believe me, many of your concerns were echoed from within as well.  Admittedly, there were some bumps and bruises at the beginning of all this, and some items did not go as well as planned.  However,  we are proud to say that a majority of the  issues have been worked out, and we are confident in and will stand behind that fact that we will be able to meet the two week production window that you are accustomed to from Pro-Tec Equipment.

2010 seemed to be the year of the re-rental.  This was our biggest year ever for rentals.  We encourage you all, where it is logistically feasible, to take advantage of our rental fleet.  We do have three different rental yards in Michigan that are here to serve you and our local contractors.   So there will be times that we won’t have exactly what you may be looking for, however, we do stock many alternatives that may work just as good (18’ long shields are a good alternate to 16’ long trench shields).

All in all, 2010 was a dramatically different year than what 2009 was.  All that is really left to be said is that WE thank you very much and look forward to working with you in 2011 to make that a much better year than 2010!

The Year That Will Be…

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Despite the current challenges to the economy, Pro-Tec’s Mod Series (Modular Aluminum Trench Shields) have never been more in demand than now.  Even when manufacturing for steel products slowed, we had a good backlog of aluminum orders, particularly Mod Series.

Pro-Tec’s rental division has struggled to keep up with the demand.  We have always had a consistent need for rentals involving spot repairs seem to have evolved into large, multiple shield orders. Read the rest of this entry »

Going “back to basics” is a simple sounding concept, but it gets harder to do the more a person is indoctrinated into a system.  This is even true when it comes to businesses, and especially true when it comes to Pro-Tec Equipment.
With the core of Pro-Tec’s staff having around 10 years of time on the job, more or less, we have been able to go through the whole learning curve.  Starting with the basics (how to size a trench shield) and going all the way to the advanced classes (custom shields and Slide Rail Systems).  However, the more and more a person deals with the advanced classes, some of the basics start to fade away.  Once you’ve mastered a calculator, it’s tough to do division, long hand, with a paper and pencil. Read the rest of this entry »

About a year ago someone decided that it would be a good idea to go ice-skating.  Now I’m pretty competitive when it comes to any type of athletic endeavor, but no one has ever asked me to play hockey.  Truth be known, I have a difficult time just getting the skates on.  Come to think of it I’m equally pathetic at bowling. (I’m thinking of giving curling a try.)  Anyway, while we were standing in line to rent our ice skates I overheard a father and his 2 young sons. The father said, “Son, you just have to wait another minute.”  To which the son replied, “But Dad, we’re waiting as fast as we can.”

Many of us are waiting for the economy to turn around and like the little boy we are getting pretty anxious.  Will 2010 be different, business wise, than 2009?  Is anyone out there getting a clear reading from your crystal ball?  Like you, I listen carefully to the news, read the papers, bounce around on the internet and listen to all the talking heads on the radio.  This is what I’m hearing “the unemployment calculator indexes for the 3^rd quarter commodities market dropped .032 points for the 4^th Tuesday in a row amidst a rapid gain in the yen which sparked a rally on the NASDAQ preferred futures….”  What does it all mean?   I’m pretty sure we are all in the same boat, waiting to hear some good news.  My non-audited, unscientific poll results are coming in and people are telling me that things are a “little” better.  A little better sounds pretty good right now.  In some circles, patience is seen as a virtue.  I tend to think of patience as a way of life.

Well, I wish I could say that 2009 was a year of records and good times, but that would be lying, and I don’t want my mom to wash my mouth out with soap.  So I will just write exactly what 2009 was.  2009 will go down as one of the toughest years in the history of Pro-Tec Equipment.

We could mostly likely classify 2009 as the  year of extremes.  We have gone from being extremely slow, to extremely busy, back to extremely slow.   President Obama calls for hope, and that is really what the underground construction industry has boiled down to, hope.

However, 2009 hasn’t be a lost year, good things have happened for Pro-Tec Equipment this year.   Through our innovation program,  we have released the 7.5’ tall Aluminum Trench Shield line, saving, in some cases more that $500 in trucking.   2009 also will go down as the year that Pro-Tec Equipment went social, networking that is.  With the launch of a Facebook and twitter page, Pro-Tec Equipment has set itself up to have the most open communication in the industry.

So what does 2010 hold for us?  Well, there is the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. BC (Russia vs.  Canada in hockey, what a match that will be), the World Cup in Brazil (could the USA Team make it to the semi’s) and probably the most important item, the release of the bulk of the “Stimulus” money from the U.S. government.  Here’s to putting 2009 in the books and starting 2010 with a bang!