Meeting Demand With the Right Equipment

Richards Septic Tank Service invests in equipment purchases to meet emerging customer needs

Meeting Demand With the Right Equipment

Zach Rodriguez of Richards Septic TankService

Richards Septic Tank Service has never shied away from upgrading equipment. The company, based in Greenville, Michigan, has a considerable list of equipment because they do it all: The company installs and repairs septic systems, provides excavation services, pumps septic tanks and has a growing portable restroom division.

“We try to have the work for the piece of equipment we have,” says Zach Rodriguez, the installation supervisor and a fourth-generation member of the family that founded the business in 1962. “We don’t really (see it as) a risk. We adapt to the work we have.”

Purchasing portable restrooms is an example, he says. The company recently exceeded the 200-unit mark, but not because it was buying for a future that it hoped would develop. Instead, the purchase of Satellite | PolyPortables units followed need.

The same applies to vacuum trucks. The company recently acquired a Kenworth semitractor and a 6,000-gallon tank trailer with a National Vacuum Equipment Challenger 607 pump.

“Tank capacities are getting big here,” Rodriguez says. There are some big chain retail stores in the area with large holding tanks. The same applies to home systems. Current regulations now sometimes require two 1,000-gallon tanks instead of one 800-gallon.

They bought a new 5,000-gallon truck with a Jurop/Chandler pump and U.S. Tank as a backup and also to handle the larger-capacity tanks now becoming more common in the area. “You send a 4,000-gallon truck and it can do only two jobs at a time,” Rodriguez says.

The tank trailer purchase might have been a risk for some, but the price was right, the business trend was right and the pumping business grew to fit the new truck. 

Read more about Richards Septic in the January issue of Onsite Installer.



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