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When the going gets tough, the tough get Doosan

Winter 2013

An ability to adapt to changing business conditions and take on new and challenging projects has helped a western Michigan construction company survive the Great Recession and continued regional economic struggles. Today, two new pieces of orange Doosan construction equipment are among the many machines on assignment for Lounsbury Excavating, Inc.

On top of the national economic crisis that crippled the United States in 2008 and 2009, Michigan has had its own set of economic challenges, most notably a decline in manufacturing in the early 2000s and again in 2008 and 2009. Michigan has one of the nation's highest rates of unemployment. In the western part of Michigan, where Lounsbury Excavating does a majority of its earthmoving and utility projects, the unemployment rate is slightly less than the state average. Fruit-and-vegetable operations and dairy production are traditionally strong agriculture cornerstones in these counties, which has helped keep it below the state average.

50-plus years in business

After returning home from World War II, Stuart Lounsbury started Lounsbury Excavating. That was 1946. He purchased some land and built an office in Paw Paw, Mich., where today Stuart's son and grandsons keep the family-owned and operated business alive. Michael Lounsbury is the president and general manager. His sons Michael L. and Jeff run the day-to-day field operations as project manager and field superintendent, respectively.

"I'm the president of the company," Michael says, "and I usually take care of the financial end of it. I help with some of the more complicated parts of the work when needed. Our estimator and fourth partner is Mike Hiestand; he handles the business development and office management."

Switch in projects

Commercial projects have always been the core of Lounsbury Excavating's business. Since 2008, Lounsbury says it switched from private to more public projects.

"Although we've been pretty slow in recent years, our work has been 60 percent public and 40 percent private," Mike says. "It used to be the opposite of that. We used to be primarily a subcontractor on jobsites. We've become more of what I'd call a site general contractor, where we're managing the whole project.

"One example is where we're taking on rebuilding parking lots and having curbs and asphalt put down. We see a lot more of that coming along now. That's a change for us. We've done a lot of school work, and replacing or installing new storm and sanitary systems, water lines and water mains. We just finished a project on a college sports complex. Currently, we are getting ready to finish a project on a county jail. We do some light, local street work but leave the highway work alone."

New Doosan pair in 2012

During the economic downturn, Lounsbury, like a lot of other contractors, did anything and everything to keep his business afloat. "We were conservative," Mike Lounsbury says, "and I think the consistency in how we run our business has helped. We have a good handle on our costs, especially our machine costs, labor costs and fuel consumption."

"I think our size plays a big role in our success, too, because we're able to adapt pretty easily to the changing marketplace, with different types of equipment," says Jeff.

Lounsbury Excavating owns an assortment of heavy construction equipment for excavating and earthmoving projects: dozers, crawler excavators and wheel loaders; some of them with as many as 18,000 hours on them.

In January 2012, new orange heavy construction equipment arrived at the Lounsbury headquarters - a DX350LC crawler excavator and a DL300 wheel loader. It was the first Doosan purchase for the Lounsbury family.

"Prior to purchasing the Doosan excavator and wheel loader, we rented a Doosan DX140LCR for a while, and then a larger 200-size crawler excavator," Mike says. "We were among some of the first in this area to demo the Doosan excavators. Carleton Equipment has never steered us wrong on anything."

"When we first rented the Doosan excavator, I called him (Mike) and said, ‘you've got to come and try this excavator because it's so smooth,'" Jeff says. "The controls were better than any other excavator I'd operated before. Our new DX350LC is a very smooth, nice machine."

On a typical day, Jeff operates a machine about 50 percent of the time. He's been able to evaluate the pluses and minuses of equipment and has well-formed opinions of their abilities. "The limited slip differential on the DL300 is a good feature," Jeff says, "and the DL300 easily gets into a pile and handles everything that I can give it. The cab is worlds away more comfortable than anything else we had. It has air conditioning, heated mirrors and many other perks."

Most importantly, Jeff has seen an increase in his productivity in the Doosan DL300. He says that in addition to the added comfort and loading abilities, it uses less fuel, too. "We're able to do more work for the same amount of fuel, per day," Jeff says. "Some of our other excavators and loaders are fuel-eating machines."

Equipment tandem on projects

Earlier this year, both the Doosan wheel loader and excavator worked in tandem at a county jail project. "We did some bulk dirt-moving, over-cutting of the site to get rid of bad soils," Mike says. "We installed pipe, storm water, sanitary and water utilities, as well as dug some retention ponds. We utilized the Doosan excavator to lift and place an oil grit separator to take the impurities out of the storm water before it goes into a stream."

At another project, the Doosan duo worked together to redo sports fields at a local college. "We did a lot of underground work there, too," Mike says. "The excavator was particularly helpful to backfill some of the big retaining walls, move dirt and load out trucks.

Attachments drive versatility

Commonly, the Doosan DL300 wheel loader is paired with a 4.8 cubic-yard general purpose bucket for moving dirt on jobsites or loading trucks. "It's a support machine for other functions on the site," Mike says. In addition to the bucket, Lounsbury has a pallet fork attachment for moving building materials and pipe.

The DX350LC excavator has a quick coupler that makes it easy for Lounsbury to switch between buckets to best match the digging conditions and required widths. "We do a lot of underground pipe work, bulk digging and truck-loading, and we shape ponds with it," Mike says. "We have a 54-inch trenching bucket with a capacity of 2.25 cubic yards for the DX350LC. We often switch buckets when we're trenching. For example, when we're working in a trench box, we'll put a narrower 36-inch bucket on.

"It's also nice for grading and shaping banks and slopes, and cutting ponds for storm water retention. For a big machine, it's much more thrifty on fuel than what we've been used to."

Strong dealer relationship

Decades ago, owner Stuart Lounsbury conducted business with an equipment dealer in the area, Carleton Equipment. Today, Carleton Equipment is still serving the needs of contractors in Kalamazoo, including the Lounsbury family. In the late 1970s, the dealership took on a line of compact equipment and shortly thereafter, Lounsbury purchased his first Bobcat^® skid-steer loaders.

"We've worked with Carleton Equipment for years and years, with the owners and their sons," Mike says. "It's a comfort level. We feel very comfortable that if we have an issue, it will be taken care of, even it if means we need another machine until ours is fixed. That's the biggest reason that got us interested in the Doosan equipment. And now that we've had a chance to put some hours on them, the machines do a good job. We expect to get at least 10,000 hours of good serviceable life out of our equipment."

Employees at Lounsbury Excavating have quickly gotten comfortable operating in the orange Doosan wheel loader and excavator. "One of our biggest problems when we bought the Doosan machines was getting some of the operators to work in them," Mike says. "They couldn't get past the orange color. That's not a problem now. We get a lot of questions from other contractors about the Doosan equipment."

Thanks to Mike and the guys at Lounsbury Excavating, Carleton Equipment was able to rent a Doosan wheel loader to another local contractor. Even in tough times, it's important to take a second look at another color of heavy equipment.