Feeling the squeeze with rising costs and a shrinking labor pool? A lot of construction companies feel trapped, like the only way out is to just grind harder with the same old playbook. But what if the real path to growth isn't about more effort, but a totally new approach to your machines, your tech, and your people?
Brian Dietz, Co-Owner of 2024 Equipment World’s Contractor of the Year, Bob Dietz and Sons Inc., runs his business more like a Silicon Valley startup than a traditional construction firm. And guess what? It's attracting a whole new generation of talent, clearly demonstrating that if you keep ignoring these shifts, you're not just risking getting left behind. You’re risking becoming irrelevant, losing bids to leaner competitors, and failing to build a team that actually wants to stick around. This isn't just about shiny new tools. It's about a complete mindset shift.
Discover how Brian is rewriting the rules of construction and building an empire.
Topics:
- Scaling up with bigger projects and equipment
- Cutting downtime and boosting site productivity
- Managing machinery lifecycles and large projects
- Future of construction tech, AI, and remote operations
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Episode transcript:
Taylor White: Welcome back, everybody, to the CONEXPO-CON/AGG podcast. I am your host, as always, Taylor White. I would like to thank our sponsor, John Deere Power Systems, of the podcast, and it could not be more fitting than to have Brian here because he is a John Deere brand ambassador. Brian, thanks for being here.
Brian Dietz: Yeah, thanks for having me, Taylor.
Taylor White: Yeah. And not only that, but you're also - you were the Contractor of the Year 2024 for Equipment World.
Brian Dietz: Yeah, that was quite an honor. Pretty exciting.
Taylor White: How did that happen?
Brian Dietz: Somebody sponsored us. They recommended it, and then, so they reach out to you when it first, we were told about, you know, we were asked to apply, and that, you know, it kind of took me for a surprise. And I actually met with Jordana, and I, you know, I asked her. I said, “Do we have a shot at this?” Because you're talking about a national award, and I'm not really somebody that wants to go into something and not win. Yeah, so she - she said, “I do think you have a shot at it.” And so we filled it out. They came out, they visit your sites, they visit your office, they talk with your crews, interview you, and you got to turn a bunch of stats in. One of the biggest things was your insurance rating for safety.
Taylor White: Really?
Brian Dietz: Yeah, it was one of the number one, number one things. So that was, yeah, quite an honor. It was a cool process to go through, and we got to meet a ton of awesome, awesome contractors that were in the room with us, and, yeah, awesome experience.
Taylor White: So, last time - you've been on the podcast before. We talked maybe two years ago, or maybe it was a year ago. I'm bad with time because I have too many kids now, and life just is one big kind of - meshes all together.
Brian Dietz: I hear that.
Taylor White: I remember, you know, talking, and I remember highlighting about, you know, how your branding and how your business has, as you've been growing your business and everything. And I'm just curious because the other day I saw a 950 John Deere on your Instagram, and I was really intrigued by that. So I would like to know, I guess, how have things been going since we last talked? What has changed, and are you getting some larger, bigger machinery, bigger jobs? How have you been growing? What's - what's been going on?
Brian Dietz: Yeah, so, you know, we've been on this growth trajectory for, I don't know, 10 years now. The branding was part of it, for sure. You know, we - we wanted the company to reflect who we are and who we want to be. And so, branding, just kind of simplifying our brand down to the name and just making it as clean as possible. We put it on our trucks, we put it on our trailers, Conex boxes, you know, the swag, everything that the guys are wearing. We wanted it to reflect the growth and the fact that we were moving more into the industrial and commercial space. Not that we're out of the residential space, by all means, but definitely growing that as you gain the equipment and the tools and the expertise and just the knowledge and experience, it allows you to go into a little bit more challenging work.
We enjoy the harder projects. We enjoy the stuff that's a little bit challenging and deeper utilities and bigger dirt to move within reason. It's easy to say “big dirt,” but there's boys out there moving some big, big dirt. It's just big dirt compared to what we're used to. So then you need bigger machines, and we're adding a couple of dozers this year and some bigger excavators and scaling into that where it's easy for the crew to be able to keep up with schedules and also maintain that quality.
Taylor White: Yeah, I don't know if there's anybody else online that has as clean and new, you know, machinery as you guys. I mean, your stuff is awesome. And, and one thing that I think maybe what probably really draws people into you, your business, the company, the people, is, like, you're very heavily invested in technology and, like, showcasing that technology and utilizing that technology, which I think is really cool. And, you know, I almost feel silly because we just now this year, you know, got GPS.
Brian Dietz: It's awesome.
Taylor White: I talked to the guys, you know, they came back to the yard yesterday. I'm like, “You know, how's it been going with the GPS on-site?” They're like, “Taylor, like, we're marking out the infiltration trench where we have to be putting our pipe, and we're not measuring off the building or the property lines. We literally just walk. We're doing it so much more quicker now.” And I'm like, “That's exactly what I want to hear.” And that's exactly why we invest in that technology. I'd like for you to talk a little bit about that technology, what kind of systems you guys are running, and what you like about them.
Brian Dietz: Yeah, so, I mean, it's exactly what you guys are saying there. It allows you to be on design. There's a lot of people that can run machines really, really well by eye, by the seat. Even though you can cut grade and you can carry material, and it doesn't discount the need for good operators, but what it does do is take a good operator that can run that machine, and then it can put him on the design because we're there to build what was designed. We're not there to just put a road in. It needs to be in the - in the location that it was designed. So it allows our guys to be just on design real fast, and it cuts out that rework. When you get out of the machine and you're shooting grades, and you realize that you're still low or you're too high, and you've brought in too much material or you got to take out material, we see just cleaning up our profit lines where we don't waste time or materials. So that's a huge thing.
We're running Topcon gear on everything. The reason we chose Topcon is because John Deere partnered with them years ago, and it made it super easy for us to have a one-stop service. Our dealer can support not only just the machine but also the tech on the machine. So the same guy coming out can keep all that going, and that was real important to us. And, you know, there's other brands out there that are credible, but at the end of the day, they all do the same thing. It's just a matter of support, and so we're getting great support through our Deere dealer for the tech we're using.
You know, there's guys out there - you say we're running a clean fleet with - with a lot of tech, and we - I really appreciate that compliment. That means a lot to me. But we look up to guys like, like Shay Stutzman out in Aspen, Colorado, just really a front-runner in showing the importance of implementing technology and and running clean - just all his gear is so clean and well branded, and your image to the public, it means a lot to the GCs that are hiring you, the towns that are hiring you. You know, it helps you to attract employees. There's a brand pride. There's just across the board, huge things. So we look up to him. He was a contractor of the year the year before. We've known Shay for a while now, and he pushes hard to just get out in front and find - he's, I mean, he's working with manufacturers inventing stuff and making connections to machines to be able to use attachments quicker, and it's inspiring for us to - to look at what he's doing, and we're trying to, you know, imitate that in what we're doing, too, because it - we see the benefits of of just supplying your guys with gear that allow them to do their job really, really well and perform at a high level and - and just maintain that. It's not just an image; like, actually your product at the end of the day is - is better.
So that's where we saw, I think the first machine, oh, back 2019, I think we bought our first base and rover. We bought a base and rover, we bought a dozer and an excavator all set up with 3-D. We took them out to a job, and it was a - a job that was a couple hundred acres, and we went out there and we started driving around with the dozer and you realize that - I mean, we didn't even know what we were getting because it was - to us, it was new. So you take it - it’s like your guys being surprised how much it can do.
Taylor White: It's crazy.
Brian Dietz: So when you - when we realize you take a dozer and you drive around the site and you see all your cuts and fills and you see where everything is, it just changes your - even you get a rain delay or you get a material delay or a subcontractor or something like that. You can just shift gears. You just go to the other end of the parking lot and start putting that end in first because it's all laid out. It's all built in there. So whereas before, it was like, “I don't know what we're going to do today. We'll clean up and we’ve got to figure out what to do.” There's just no downtime. You just keep going. So that's just been - been huge, and as this, you know, the technology's not new, but it is progressing rapidly. So the newer versions, they're just getting better and better. Using more satellites, the monitors are getting better. You can design from the seat, so your operators can get in there and they can do some basic designs. If they're trying to cut it, you know, if they're putting lifts in, they can real quick just put a consistent - whatever your engineer is calling for, they say, “Give me an 8-inch lift,” they can give you a dead-on 8-inch lift over and over and over consistently without any guesswork. And it's just amazing what - what can be done. And I think it's pretty cool that you can take guys that aren't your main operators and really quickly teach them to do basic operations with machines. You know, they could take a dozer and your truck driver can get out, if you show him how to start the dozer and how to turn on the GPS, he could put the parking lot in himself if he - he can push that off on grade. And there's so much stuff coming as they integrate machine-to-machine communication and job site management. You can watch this progress and get actual reports from the office. It's just changing the dirt world completely from what it was my father's generation and before, even what we grew up in. It did take decades to acquire skills in order to perform, and you had to know how to read prints. And it's kind of nice because you can - it opens up more opportunity for younger guys to get seat time quickly and be efficient.
I think a lot of times, operators’ - that career path was delayed by the fact that either you had a really skilled guy in the seat already who didn't want to give it up to the young guy, or the young guy just kind of got filler work. You got keep-busy work in machines, and he didn't get the experience - real production. And so now with the technology, it still takes the same amount of time for them to acquire the skills. It may take a couple of decades for them to just become an amazing operator and really experience different things on different sites and different applications, but it allows them to quickly get in that seat and be a productive part of the team where they're efficient. So for us, that's - that's pretty cool because we're trying to attract young guys to the company. We have a lot of young guys in our company. The stigma is young people don't want to work. I think young people want to work. They want to be efficient, they want to be productive. They don't want to work and waste their time. You know, you got three old guys who are cranky and crusty, and they don't want the young guys near them, and they keep barking at them. Those young guys don't want to work with them. But when that young guy, he's nineteen years old and he's in a second dozer right next to the old guy, and the old guy can get on the radio and teach him, and he could use that technology to help him grow quickly and get on grade, he's going to fall in love with that machine. He's going to feel good, he's going to go home happy to his family, and he's going to want to come back tomorrow excited to - to work. So that's where the technology - it's not just about making money; it's about building a team and giving them the tools that are exciting to go out and do the work.
Taylor White: Yeah, for sure. And you touched on a couple of really important things at the beginning. You said it helps profit. It's very true. You're not overdigging; you're not putting in too much material. For us, when we were excavating for the footings on a commercial build that we were just doing, we're not overdigging, we're not underdigging. You know, an overdig would mean we took more material off-site, and we're importing more granulars below the footing as well, too. That's a huge, huge part of it, and that's what I'm seeing. But what I want to ask about you is, like, what's the learning curve like for these employees? Like, I know that you kind of touched on it - when somebody gets in the machine, you know, they can put it on. But truly, what is the learning curve from somebody that has been running a dozer for forever or an excavator forever, and you throw GPS in there? What are you seeing as far as timeline or onboarding them onto it? How is that process going?
Brian Dietz: I think if it's, like, in a residential setting where the site's not modeled and you stick a smart dozer over there and he can turn it on and create simple planes, I think the learning curve's longer there because you're not really embracing it fully. When you're - you're on a commercial site where it's modeled and you can see that, and you can take a guy who's - he's looking to a layout guy for - or a surveyor to give him feedback, right? So he's got a guy on the ground that's - that's giving him cuts and fills and layout and offsets. That guy, he picks it up real quick because that monitor, it gives him all the info he needs to not have to slow down. That guy is - he's high production, and so he - he looks at that monitor, he quickly can see his cuts and fills, he quickly can see his curb lines or whatever he's doing. It's right there. And so we see those guys just - they pick it up super fast. It really does come down to the operator, though, if they - if they want to embrace it. Some guys are just like, “I don't like technology,” and it takes them longer. But I think the confidence it gives a guy, it attracts people to it quicker because everybody wants to feel good. It's their natural feeling for an operator to want to be on grade, in the right place, and not have to redo stuff. So I think it - it just feeds that pride of craftsmanship or whatever you want to call it for the operator.
Taylor White: Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, it's difficult. I mean, especially with us, like, we have a lot of young people as well, too. And honestly, so far, the testament has been like, “This is awesome. We love this.” The learning curve is, you know, they're constantly learning new things with it, which is kind of cool. And it comes down to, like what you said, is the support, right? Them being able to go on to, you know, an app and message support, and they message them right back, or the local person come out and talk to us if we have an issue, or, you know, setting up our first couple jobs for that has been really handy as well.
I am interested to hear your opinion because you are so embraced by technology. Where is tech going in the construction industry? And the second part to that would be, where do you see it going with AI, and do you utilize AI both in the field and in the office? Because there's a lot of uses for it in the office that we're seeing here. So I'm interested to hear your take on that.
Brian Dietz: Where's technology going? I think it's solving problems. Specifically, the cost of goods is going up so high - the cost of the machine, the cost of materials, the cost of labor across the board. So if you can't be efficient, you can't make money. This is a tough industry to be in because you just - your overhead is just massive. You know, these machines are - it's not cheap. You know, you add one machine, it costs as much as a house. And so when you have a fleet of machines and trucks and then all the gear that goes with it, you have a huge investment. So to take that and then operating costs on a daily basis, insurance and just fuel, everything that's going out, those machines every day have to go out and be profitable. And so the technology is allowing you to just be efficient. I think it's becoming a necessary part for our industry. It's not something that you can continue to grow or scale a business without. I think you'd be really hard-pressed to do it without it. So we're looking at, you know, every time we talk with manufacturers, whether it's at ConExpo shows or actually in person at different events that we get invited to, or even just reading the construction magazines, you see, everyone across the board is investing in it because they see that - that same reason. It's just - it's absolutely necessary at this point. So it's pretty cool to see some of the stuff that is coming. It's mind-blowing to think from 20 years ago, 30 years ago, where a machine was simply a motor and hydraulics and a bucket blade to today, you know, you're - you can completely operate that machine remotely. And now pretty soon, with AI, you won't even need that.
You know, there's a huge debate on whether you're taking jobs. We actually have a massive shortage of people who want to sit in these machines and run them. However, remote operation may be more appealing to a younger generation who's more tech-savvy and maybe sit in an office, built a space in their own - even in their home, and they could supply that in-person - you know, the operator is - is running it from a screen, but it's a young person that may, you know, might be drawn more to a video game feel than actually going out in the dirt, breathing the dust and sitting in the cab, traveling to the site. You got remote sites, you got all kinds of options. You think of these mining applications where you had a guy in that truck breathing that coal or whatever it was, you know, even just stone dust, whatever, for years, and he dies young because he was in there. So why not - why not get the guy out of that and find a different way to utilize that same operator but maybe remotely? Or when there's a shortage, you have to come up with a solution. So that's the solution. The solution is to allow the machine to take on more.
So, you know, the world has changed. My great-grandfather dug foundations with horses and scoops down all over Long Island and in the city. You know, I'm sure they hated hydraulics because there was an art that was lost in taking care of the horses. And I don't know what it would take to do that. It would blow my mind to even think of actually, you know, having a farm and then using that for construction. It seems - seems crazy.
Taylor White: It is crazy.
Brian Dietz: But what the hydraulics did for our industry and changed, you know, that's what technology is doing again, or AI is going to do, where you can just lower the human factor, which is, in honesty, it's - it's a lot of risk in what we do. So just in the applications that we've seen, having less people on the ground next to the machine, you can put them in another machine. We can actually afford to add machines because we have people to get in them. Whereas before, you didn't have the people to put in them. So I take the same crew of whatever your guys are, put them in more machines because they're all productive. So even your support machines, you got rollers that, you know, they can show you the path that you've been on. It can tell you when you've passed it enough times or, you know, you're getting compaction on it, and it changes the quality of your work at the end of the day.
Taylor White: What about in the office with AI? For instance, for example here, you know, like somebody sends over, you know, a big long contract, a working contract. We can throw that into ChatGPT, we can look at it. We had a client want us to design something on their property super quick. Like, it was a small item. We took a picture of it, we came back here, we got ChatGPT to kind of render up something, and we're like, “What do you think of kind of like this?” There's so many easier small use cases that we've been finding for ChatGPT. Not like writing content for us or doing anything like that, but just as an aid. We don't rely on it like a - like a crutch, putting our weight on it, but we know that it's there to help us if we need it to utilize for certain stuff. And I - I was just down in the States with my buddy Dylan, and he was actually using it to put his pipe drawings into it and being like, “All right, here's my invert. Here's this. How much material is going to be underneath?” Like, and it was doing like these little takeoffs for him, and I couldn't believe it. The possibilities are endless with this stuff.
Brian Dietz: And it's only going to get better.
Taylor White: Are you utilizing any of that sort of stuff? Have you been doing it?
Brian Dietz: A little bit. Yeah, we're - we're starting to. I mean, I think we realize the same thing, that the benefits are huge. I think the fear is there in the beginning because you - you're losing some of that acquired skill where you're trusting this computer. And it - but it's going to level the playing field. You know, the guys that had decades - the same as the operator, you know, the guys, the estimators and the takeoff guys that - they just had incredible skill. You know, takeoff software kind of replaced that. You plug it in and it kicks it out in a report. We use it for cuts and fill reports, and it really helps us. We, you know, make our heat sheets, and we can look at where our struggles are. 3-D - I mean, that's what it's done for us in a lot of ways. It could take, model the project and spin it around, look at it, and you can find flaws. And so AI is going to - it's going to do all that. It's going to catch that stuff where we are so easily distracted today with so much going on. You know, the world is just moving at a faster pace. Everything technology is making us go faster. So you kind of need that AI support so that you can make sure you're not missing things. So yeah, it's definitely something that if you're not embracing it, if you're not grabbing a hold of it, you're going to be - you're going to be left behind.
Taylor White: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's - it's like the whole workflow thing is just like even how it like summarizes emails now within Apple, like on my - on my Mac, you know, like it summarizes the email so I don't have to necessarily read the whole thing. So I know right away, okay, is this something I need to sit down and respond to right now, or is that something that could hold off till later when I have a little bit more free time? Which is really cool.
I'd like to know your kind of trajectory moving forward with the business. Like, you guys have been 10 years, like you said, kind of on this growth pattern. Is that your goal, is to keep continuing to grow until maybe you're not doing it anymore, or what is your, you know, 10-, 20-, 30-, 40-year plan over at your business?
Brian Dietz: I think Tony and I are having fun. I think our guys are having fun.
Taylor White: That's awesome. I love hearing that.
Brian Dietz: And so I think that is our goal, to continue having fun. The day that we're not having fun, we probably will start making changes. But right now we decided many years ago that it's more fun to work with a crew and accomplish stuff as opposed to just beating your body up and you're running around like a clown trying to accomplish work with just a couple of us. So once we decided that, then the goal was to build a good team, maintain the reputation that we have, maintain the, you know, the image of clean equipment, clean trucks. And it is going really well as far as that. We get incredible support from our dealer and from John Deere. We're utilizing a lot of their latest equipment. We're adding some brand new pieces. That 950 is - it's serial number 1001.
Taylor White: No way.
Brian Dietz: Of the next gen of that machine. So that's hitting our site on - on Tuesday.
Taylor White: That's insane.
Brian Dietz: It's pretty cool. So it's got the latest of - of everything as far as the tech goes for Deere. Just this week, we ordered an 850X. So that's the diesel-electric hybrid dozer. And that went down the assembly line. We should have some footage of that that we can share coming up soon. That dozer's going to be another incredible add to the fleet. You know, you're saving fuel, you're getting more power out of it, but you're also showing that you're willing to adapt with the industry and find a green solution that's kind of in the middle of that hybrid where you - you just burn in less fuel. You've given your guys a more powerful dozer. And the coolest thing about that dozer is basically the older ones, previously, you know, they had a lifespan - about 10,000 hours, you would send it out to a farm to retire somewhere, and that would be about what you get out of it. But now, at that 10,000 hours, you re-man that, you change those, and you can keep that dozer going. So that should live in our fleet for some time. We update machines, so whether it lives in our fleet and somebody else's, you're still going to have a longer life out of that piece of equipment. So we're seeing that technology - a lot of manufacturers are using that hybrid, which I'm - I think is more exciting than fully electric.
Taylor White: That is really cool. What keeps it fun for you? And I know you're talking about, like, the machinery and everything, but, like, what if you had to say your most fun part about what you're doing right now, the business? What is the most fun part about it all? Is it like the technology? Is it the machinery kind of like what you just said, or is it something completely different?
Brian Dietz: I think the most fun I get is just trying to live in a space that's unique. There's a lot of people out there that have excavators and dig holes every day - a lot. Millions of guys out there doing it, right? But when you say you got one of the cleanest fleets, that's what gets me excited because I feel like we're doing a dirty job that everybody's doing, but we’re trying to do it a little bit different. Years ago, we had a guy that says, “You know, you never see anybody with a whole fleet of trucks, and they're lifted and they're all set up and they're beautiful. You know, you got, like, you know, maybe three or four or five, and then the rest of them are just work trucks.” And I think sometimes those statements inspire us to go, “I think we can.” And then you go do it, and you're like, “I'm going to set the standard, and we're going to hold the guys to the standard.” And not in a bad way. We're going to say, “Hey, this is the job. If you want to work in a space where, like, we don't dent stuff, we take care of it, we get creative, and we find a way to work in tight spaces and not destroy our gear,” that attracts certain people. And other people are like, “This is ridiculous. I don't want to do this. This is like, you know, it's too hard.” Well, if it comes hard for you, then this isn't the right place. For some people, it comes easy.
I've always thought it's easier to work with good equipment that isn't beat up, that isn't leaking, that isn't breaking. It's easier. So I would rather buy a new machine and run it at peak performance than try and keep old jalopies running when you just got, you know, seals going out and breakdowns all the time. And everybody in the company is enjoying it. Sure, there's times where you're like, “This is impossible to work in here.” “Okay, well, since this is the trajectory we've chosen, that means we've got to get you a different machine. We may have to move a machine different to fit in that space, or we may have to get creative and talk with the, you know, ownership and see if that tree - maybe the tree comes out. Maybe - maybe we put a side road in coming in the other side.” We just - we may approach it different. But if we want to be different, it means across the board we're going to actually do the work a little bit different. And I think that that's the most fun to me, is seeing the guys excited. You go out at the end of the day, there's a lot of pride in - you'll pull through a site, and our own guys are like, “Man, look at this. Like, this is impressive.” You see all - it's just like, it looks like a dealership full of - full of equipment. It's like a photo shoot every day. It's - it's fun to capture content because any one of our sites you go to, there's just beautiful machines moving dirt, and it's organized, and it's clean, and it's efficient, and the guys, they're happy.
So as far as, like, growth, where's it going? I think it's just as, you know, continue on that trajectory. We've always had our office kind of on my dad's property. You know, he started the business, and it was there, and so it was easy to just keep it there. The business is 49 years old this year. We just bought a new little office complex. We got a new office, a lot of room for growth. We went from a pretty small office that we were keeping people in site offices and guys that didn't have a desk to where now we've got - we've got enough space for growth. And then there's a couple warehouses next to it and some more land - thirty-something acres that we can expand on, and it's all industrial. And, yeah, it's just exciting to see like another step for us to support that and really reflect who we are at this point.
Taylor White: That's really cool. I like hearing that. Definitely the growth pattern is something that is super important. And with growing, and you talk about machinery, and I like that you touched on this, was a new versus old machinery. What is your theory on that? How long are you keeping an excavator for? You know, you finance a machine for whatever, how many years, or, you know, when are you looking at getting rid of that - that piece of iron to flip it into a new one? Is it when the, you know, the parts are costing more than the payments on the new one? Is it when it starts looking a little dilapidated, or do you just send them out to get repainted? What's your theory on that?
Brian Dietz: So we've never painted a machine, which is pretty crazy. Everything we have is original paint on it, which is kind of unheard of. So I will be inspired to sell a machine if somebody scratches one. We have been known to - to get rid of excavators the day after a tail gets scratched or something, and we've never wiped out a tail, like, ever. We've never really just like pounded into something. But usually, if we beat something up in some way, that will - that will inspire us to kind of update it. We're looking to have new machines that aren't breaking down. So something hits 4,000 or 5,000 hours, we're probably updating that machine. Now, with that said, as we're growing, we can't get rid of all of our machines. We can't - you know, when you have five machines, it's kind of easy to keep them new. When you have twenty machines, you go, “Okay, this one needs to go sit on a stockpile, and this one needs to go.” And you get - I think we're around sixty machines now. You can't get rid of everything. So while we're adding a lot of new stuff, we're not necessarily selling the old stuff. So we're starting to see uses for machines that, you know, maybe it was a 350 and you bought it with GPS, and, but that can go work in the quarry and not be your main-line digger, you know, and you could replace that with something newer. And that's a new space for us. We've never been in that space before where we start kind of tiering our machines. So we're starting to keep things - looking at keeping things a little bit longer and growing. Now, of course, that means that you don't have that trade-in value to add. You're holding on to it, so now you're coming up with more. But as your job's big and you're doing more production, as you add another job, you know, if you got four jobs going on, you can add a fifth job. Well, now you can actually - that job should support another machine. It can't be a one-month job. It has to be an 18-month job, you know? You got to, as you - as you scale and you get bigger things, then you can add more machines.
So that's what we're looking at, is just utilizing what we have, but also as we build out crews, one of the biggest things that we're seeing for maintaining tools and equipment and just having pride in them is assign them to people. If you can assign crew, they've got their machines, they've got their compactors, they've got their tools, they've got their truck and Conex boxes and everything. That ownership is changing how they take care of it. You know, they just respect it. They know that's theirs. But when you kind of have the tool crib idea, it doesn't get treated the same. You know, it kind of like, “Well, there's four of them, so I'm just going to grab one, and maybe we take care of it. If not, we'll just swap it out for another one.” So that's something also kind of new to us, is just really building out crews, and they get assigned excavators. And you know, then it allows you, too, like - it's like, “Well, what does a crew need? If they're going to go out to a job, what do they need?” And then you have your list of everything, and so it allows you to kind of see the holes in your lineup, and then you can start filling those in. And it's a growth thing for us because we've never been there where we - we just kind of had, you know, maybe one big job going on, and then you'd have - you know, you could have dozens of smaller or mid-sized jobs keeping guys busy in between. But as you start building crews in and you bid work for that crew, well, that crew needs this kind of work, and you're looking for that job, and they come in, and it just starts becoming more strategic.
Taylor White: Is there lots of those jobs around? How are things down where you are? Are you guys - is it the economy? Everything's fairly busy. Things are good?
Brian Dietz: You know, it's interesting because you hear a lot of guys are saying they're slow. We are slammed, just all-out slammed. 2024 was a very interesting year for us because interest rates were high, the economy was a little funky with the election and all kinds of other things that were just on everybody's mind. So - so there was just like a kind of a pause in the bigger work. ’25 started off tough with, you know, we got tariffs and all kinds of issues that are - everybody's questioning things. But that seems to have leveled out. Everything that we were bidding in ’23 and ’24 is coming in for us now. And so we're just starting a lot of big jobs one after the next. And that's, you know, that gives you a little bit of comfort knowing that you've got - you put guys on a - on a site for a year or two, put a - put a crew there. That's a really nice feeling knowing that you got some backlog for guys.
Taylor White: Yeah, those are some big jobs - a year or two. Wow, that's crazy. Those are some big referencing projects. And you do like the site services, excavation, all the grading work, everything?
Brian Dietz: Yeah, we're starting to get more into owning the entire site package. So we'll take you all the way through paving, concrete, landscaping, the whole site, everything but the building. So we'll bring our utilities in, we'll do all your DOT work all the way through everything.
Taylor White: And that's in-house, or are you going to sub that out?
Brian Dietz: We're subbing some out. Yeah, so depending on the scope of the job. Concrete work, we're doing small stuff in-house. We'll do curbs and flat work, but the bigger things, we'll get rid of that. Paving, same thing. We're completely subbing paving out. But, you know, as - as you grow, that'll be something that will - it'll be a natural progression to move into that.
Taylor White: Yeah. That's exciting. I love your mindset. That's kind of like us, you know, I'm not on projects that are a year or two years, but I like the - the pattern that you're talking about, like handling that stuff in-house, because that's what I'd say as well, too. It's this natural progression of us being able to do that. We used to sub out our site servicing work, you know, manholes, hooking up to the water, sewer, the storm works, and now we complete that all in-house. So it's just kind of like naturally over and over, you kind of just, you know, absorb that - that stuff and - and kind of grow from there, which is really fun, and it's really cool because it's something new.
Brian Dietz: Yeah, I think the biggest reason for that for us, is just control. You control the site. So we've seen different times where we get all the way up to finish grade. We've prepped out all parking lots, all our storms in. Everything is just, like, dialed in. It's good. And a paver comes in, and they just start dragging everything around, and then they pave it and everything's off. And now you're, you know, you're like, why are we - or the guys come in and set the curbs at whatever height they decided to set at. So because we didn't own that, you know, the GC owned that. We didn't have money to go and support it and to help, you know, them lay out. We're now stuck with picking our whole parking lot up where it's all too high or whatever. So the idea of control so that we can bring our quality all the way to the building. We're not wasting our time chasing inferior work from someone else. And I don't mean that insulting. I just think it's a reality. It's like, if we're using one model and the paver comes in and he doesn't have that model to plug into his equipment, then, you know, he's not going to necessarily see it the way we built it. So if we can continue that growth sustainably, you know, in time, it naturally feels like that's your next step, is to just keep owning that, and your guys just keep picking up skills, and you keep adding guys that have skills. And that's kind of part of the fun that I'm talking about, is, like, realizing what you can do as a group of people. You got a group of guys that come together and just - it's amazing. I love visiting sites that I'm not on every day. You go there and you're just like, “Man, this is awesome.” Like, so much has changed. And you look at the quality of it, and you see young guys - young, young guys, 18, 19, 20 years old, just killing it. Just huge assets to the crew. Happy to be there, excited to learn, excited to be given the responsibility of running these huge machines. And, yeah, it's cool.
Taylor White: I love it. No, I love it. It's - it's the same thing. And I love that you're - like, you have a genuine, like, you get fired up about that stuff, and I love that, because that's what we need more of in this industry, is guys running businesses just like you. You mentioned you have a bunch of machinery stuff, so I don't want to hold you up any longer. I really appreciate you coming and talking to us for the second time now, and I know that we're going to catch you March 3 to the 7th coming up now, the ConExpo show soon. So I know you'll be down there, and I'm excited to - to chat with you. And other people should definitely pick your brain on some stuff because you're a very smart man and you got a lot of cool things going on.
Brian Dietz: Oh, you're too kind. I appreciate that. It's always nice to see you and appreciate having you on - or having me on the show here.
Taylor White: Awesome. I appreciate it, Brian. Thank you very much for coming on, and we'll catch you on the next one.
Brian Dietz: All right, man, thanks.
Taylor White: Take care.