My Story

Where did Kleankrete come from?

The experience started 11 years ago, in 2009, when I started Hydro Excavation.

Back story on how I found Hydro Excavation. I worked construction right out of high school for a company where my dad was a supervisor. I was on a different crew in a different town. I worked my way up to running loaders, dump trucks, excavators, and other heavy equipment. When the job ended, I didn't want to go to the next job which would have required relocation. An operator there told me to look for a swamper job on a pipeline. So I did and low and behold I found one on Southeasttexas.com years ago when that was the place to look for anything. I called and got an interview the next day. I met a man at an office in Orange, TX where there were these big triple axle tractor rigs. It's not what I had in mind, but heck I needed a job. I grew with each company, only 3 in the 11 years, and left with good reasons and on good terms. I became an operator of a truck about mid way through the years, just me and a helper. We didn't have supervisor's, foreman's or any fancy mentors like that. You had to work hard and figure it out on your own and every job was different.

What does a Hydro Excavator do? It's a huge truck with a vacuum system that could suck a 100 pound rock out of an excavation and a huge hydraulic driven pressure washer that pushed 3000 psi with anywhere from 16 to 20 gallons per minute. We excavated around underground utilities with the water turning the dirt into mud and then using the vacuum system to suck it into a tank on the truck. We dug around anything from broken leaking pipelines to locating high voltage underground power lines.

This is where my experience came from. That much pressure with that many gallons per minute could cause more damage then anything. I have dug thousands of lines up without damage and spent minimal time looking for them. It got to where I could hear and feel through vibration when I was getting close to a line and knew when to start backing off. It was a dirty job and got everything around dirty. After each excavation, we had to pressure wash the area. These areas could range from valve sites to electrical buildings to office buildings and anything in between. The biggest problem with pressure washing is water intrusion. I had to learn to spot troubled areas and either mask off or use other techniques to safely clean the area.

Wanting to put my skills and knowledge of water to use is how Kleankrete was created. Kleankrete may be a young company, but there is years of experience behind it.