In our industry, you never know when you’ll meet a new client, or forge a valuable new relationship. Several years ago, we were at a trade organization convention in Phoenix, Arizona, and a contractor stopped by our booth to see if we could provide a pricing quote for a large project in Washington, D.C. We ended up going in together on that job, and as a result, we met several different key players in the D.C. market.
From there, we’ll fast-forward a few years, to when Midwest Mole President Jason Miller and rail division manager David Howell were heading to the airport after wrapping up a project in the D.C. area. Moments after Jason and David dropped off their rental car, David got a call from a contractor who said that a sewer had failed just one block away from the White House, and a sinkhole had opened up in the street as a result.
There’s probably quite a few companies out there that would say, “It’s too late, we’re already at the airport to head home,” but Midwest Mole is definitely not one of those companies. Instead, we rented another car, drove from the airport back into D.C., and helped repair the sewer and fill the sinkhole.
Because this was on Memorial Day weekend, we had to pull some strings to even get materials to do the job. We ended up calling one of our contacts in Virginia, who loaded a truck with pipe and delivered it to the job site around 11pm that night. We worked around the clock all weekend long to rehab that sewer, and the city was able to re-open the street shortly after Memorial Day.
When you’re a relatively small company located in Indiana, and you’re getting calls to do a bunch of work on a holiday weekend in the heart of the nation’s capitol, it’s incredibly rewarding to be the company people come to when an emergency pops up. It requires a lot of travel and even more hard work, but moments like this one remind us of why we put in all the hours.
That’s why we say that our industry ultimately comes down to relationships ― with contractors, with our materials suppliers, and with utility companies across the country. Sometimes there’s no advance warning when opportunity is about to come knocking, which is why Midwest Mole is ready to answer the call day or night, all year round.