It’s Paid for Itself Over and Over

“I was a project manager and I realized there’s no way I could have gone higher,” said McNeice, who remembers thinking “I have more potential than this.”

McNeice started his company in Canton, Mass., working weekends and nights during the week after his regular full-time job. He was working mostly alone except when he’d hire friends to help him on the weekends. “But a lot of the things we did we wouldn’t have been able to do without the engcon. It just made things much easier.” That’s still true.

McNeice says an engcon fits best with a smaller company or an owner/operator business. “It’s not a fleet machine thing,” he said. “It’s a finesse tool for… someone who runs the machine every day.”

So, why start his company with such a large purchase? McNeice said he’d watched engcon videos online, and followed that up by talking to other engcon owners. After that, he didn’t want to go on his own without it. “The way I looked at it was…I buy this as a one-time purchase and it replaces a laborer. The initial investment is big money…but it’s paid for itself over and over again by saving labor,” he said.

In 2023 he added an engcon EC219 on a 2023 Komatsu PC138, and later in 2024 he’s taking delivery of an engcon EC206 with EC-Oil on the top and bottom for a Kubota KX057.

“The beauty on that (top and bottom) is if we’re digging where we don’t need the tilt rotator, or doing harddigging, I can just drop it and put it off to the side and dig with a fixed bucket and not put unnecessary strain on the rotator,” he said. Seems like good advice. He has 2,800 hours on that first engcon and the only thing he ever had to replace was the DC2 internal computer,” he said. “The actual internals of the machine, they haven’t skipped a beat.”

One of the big advantages to adding another engcon is that he already has all the attachments from his first. “They all use the same S40 coupler, and I already have every S40 attachment you can get,” he said.

On a recent February afternoon in Ipswich, Massachusetts, McNeice was working a house demolition. First he and an employee, who was also operating a machine with a engcon, cleared brush from the site before demolishing the house and pulling out a portion of the foundation.

Clearing the debris from a project of that size is less time consuming with the engcon rotating grapple because it makes it easier to move the debris into dumpsters. “If I have a fixed bucket, I can only put it in one way,” he said, explaining that with the engcon he can move the debris around, make some space, and not end-up with just enough left over to require another dumpster... “I can fit more…so it saves me trips…it saves me money.”

McNeice remembered his first engcon in 2019. “Right off right off the bat I could run it, but I had to stop and think about what I was doing.” McNeice practiced for about 40 hours before he was comfortable. These days, “I consider myself a very good operator…it’s just an extension of my hand, I don’t even think about it,” he said, with a pleased shrugged. As an owner/operator, the engcon makes the amount of work he does possible and easier on him and his employee.

“Let’s just talk about our bodies. Let’s talk about just not having to break you back to shovel because you can get into that little area (with the tiltrotator). Not only does it save time…it saves my body. When I’m 60, I’ll be riding dirt-bikes living the dream, and in my opinion you can’t put a price on that. You can’t put a price on health.” In addition to his new engcon 206 with EC oil top and bottom, McNeice recently bought a kit to refurbish his first engcon. “We’re going to rebuild all the pins and bushings, and we’re good for another 2,500 hours,” he said. His business, Will McNeice Site Services, is McNeice and one employee, and in 2024 he expects to do about $1 million worth of work.

When asked if he can imagine running a machine without an engcon tiltrotator, he said he’d never go back to working without one on any machine owns, and that sounds like the answer to the million dollar question.