English
Drilling down to a better solution
Winter 2015
At one time, Ed Amos and two of his key employees, Darin Sweeney and Steve Dennis, worked as deep foundation contractors in the Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., areas.
“The REV drill powered by a Doosan excavator is the answer to some of the most important issues facing the drilling industry,” Amos, president of REV Drill Sales & Rentals, Frederick, Maryland, says. Our product is a fraction of the cost of other equipment.
And since it is powered by an excavator, once the drilling is complete the drill can be removed in 45 minutes or less and you can start digging with the excavator.”
“For the rental portion of our business, which is about 60 percent of our business, we have relied on Doosan excavators for years,” Amos continues. “We’ve got 20 of the units today and are confident we can send them out with our drills knowing that rental customers will have the best equipment combination available.”
Company changed over time
Dennis, sales manager of REV Drill, adds, “Our budget was limited, so he spent a lot of time shopping for just the right excavator to send out with our rental drills. A reliable machine in the right price range was the key to developing a good rental business.”
Amos says he looked at several brands of excavators, but was pleasantly surprised by the economic benefits of the Doosan machines.
“The initial capital investment or cost per hour was much less than other products,” Amos recalls. “Some comparable machines were 50 percent higher than the Doosan excavators. The price originally caught my attention, but over the years I have come to appreciate other important features of doing business with Doosan and H&E Equipment Services: product reliability, support and service, warranty, parts availability and a good all-round machine that is productive and operator-friendly.”
Today REV Drill has 20 Doosan crawler excavators in its rental fleet, ranging in size from the DX180LC to the DX350LC, plus a DX190W wheel unit. The units are rented from a couple of days up to six or eight months. Many clients have rented from the company for more than a decade.
“Most of our customers are in heavy highway construction,” Amos says. “That type of work includes a lot of deep foundation applications, including caissons, pre-drilling for support of excavation, bridge abutments, micropiles and rock drilling. Some of the largest contractors are using our rental drills and excavators to build sound walls.
His business is also benefiting from the explosion of new highway and bridge construction. This has resulted in sales throughout the world, along with rental units currently in Dallas, Chicago and New York, and throughout the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore region.
“The drills, with their simple design, are built to perform in many applications and working conditions,” Amos says. “And while the excavators take a good beating out in the field, they also hold up very well. We have probably put about 100,000 total hours on our Doosan machines and have experienced only minimal downtime. We put 7,000 hours on one of our excavators. I sold it and it’s still going strong.”
