With engcon, we get much more done with our excavator

Andrew Amodeao had been using his engcon tiltrotator for almost seven months when we met him one late summer day at a site in Stamford, CT. He was laying a new sidewalk alongside the road that runs down to the harbor. Andrew is totally convinced about the way things will be in future. “We’ll keep on equipping our excavators with engcon,” says Andrew.

Andrew runs Silver Lake Contracting along with his dad John, who started the company 45 years ago. When Andrew was old enough to drive an excavator he began working for the company, and today he is a partner. “I was pretty new to the industry when I saw an engcon tiltrotator on the Internet and I thought gee, with one of those I could get things done nobody could even dream of.” But it took quite some time for Andrew to convince his dad that they just had to test an engcon tiltrotator on one of their excavators. But once Andrew had succeeded, it didn’t take long before his dad also realized the benefits after watching the transformation of their Kobelco SR70 into a multitasker that was suddenly able to do so much more than before. “Having an engcon tiltrotator on my excavator is like having a third hand,” says Andrew. “The tiltrotator reduces the need for manual labor, and today I do 90 per cent of the work our general laborers used to do. Now they only have to do the final cleanup and a few lighter jobs,” continues Andrew.

Andrew also tells us they save loads of time as there’s no need to keep moving the machine. “Before we bought the engcon tiltrotator, I was constantly shifting excavator position to get at a job, and most of the time I needed at least one guy with a spade to reach that last little bit,” says Andrew. “But today, we save time and money, reduce machine wear and lower our carbon footprint.” His dad adds that these days, they don’t have to cordon off as much area when they’re excavating. “This particular job is a good example. As you can see, we have a truckload of gravel standing in the road and thanks to the tiltrotator, I’m able to use the excavator to take just the right amount of material from the truck bed. Before the tiltrotator, I had to have a wheel loader or dump truck drive next to the sidewalk across the street to dump the material in the right place,” says John. “And now, I only have to close one lane to get the sidewalk job done, but before I would’ve had to close at least two lanes,” adds Andrew.

Both Andrew and John mention water, sewers, electricity and cable as perfect tiltrotator applications with a minimized need for manual labor, as utilities are often located in tight places and pipes and cables etc. are usually on top of one another. “Thanks to the tiltrotator, I’m now able to rotate the bucket 90 degrees and use the cutting edge or teeth to dig out the soil between those pipes and cables that are on top of each other. This used to be impossible without a spade and manual labor,” says Andrew. Before we took farewell of Andrew and dad John, we asked them what their next step would be in their efforts to increase profitability further. “We’ve already made up our minds that the next tiltrotator will have an integrated grab; it will make our work even more efficient,” said founder John resolutely, without the merest trace of the doubt he once had.