Cole Gailor, Gailor Ground and Earthworks LLC

“We were looking at a new excavator and we needed something to fit our needs…that crossover residential-sized machine that we could get into tight places but also be large enough to get into some of the other spots where we need to load tri-axle trucks,” he said. “The Cat 306 fit the bill, but we wanted more universal use, and the tiltrotator was the only way to go.”

That 2021 decision was not made on a whim. First, Gailor reached out to multiple engcon owners who had experience with the equipment, and what they had to say he found very persuasive. “Frankly,” Gailor recalled, “the selling factor was EC-Oil (engcon’s quick coupler system). That really sold it for me and my dad. I hadn’t even run one, but I knew we needed this.”

Gailor was working at a softball field in Clinton Park, NY, when we visited, improving drainage, paring back thick outfield grass, as well as grading and general clean-up under the fences and behind home plate. When Gailor angled the engcon and scraped-up the outfield grass that had crept into the infield, it was like he was peeling an apple.

Then he just swung the bucket 180 degrees, angled it again, and dumped it into a truck. Excavation and landscaping is in Gailor’s blood. One of his grandfathers operated a landscaping business the 1950s, when a backhoe was an advanced piece of equipment, and his other grandfather operated a cable shovel at an iron ore mine. His parents started Peter J. Gailor Landscaping and Excavating in the 1970s, and he grew-up on skid steers and excavators the way other kids played on skateboards and bicycles.

Gailor rebranded the company Gailor Ground and Earthworks LLC after his father died in 2022, but the work is not so different. It’s mostly grading, retaining walls, and drainage solutions with an emphasis on problem-solving rather than just following a set of plans.

These days, he said, homeowners are more interested in improving their current properties with projects like adding a detached garage, rather than buy new. Talking about the work going on at the ball field, Gailor noted the versatility of the engcon.

“There’s a lot of work that I could do (here) with a skid steer, but instead I chose to bring in the excavator with the engcon so I can use the grading bucket,” Using other equipment would require a lot more movement and the creation of multiple paths on and around the ball field. With the engcon, he said, he can reach and excavate using only one access path because it’s so agile and mobile. Also,”I can sneak-in along and under the fences with the grading bucket,” he points out. “That’s the beauty of being able to rotate it, you can turn it at a 45-degree angle and lay the cutting edge flat and clean it up nice and neat. I’m able to do things with more precision.”

At this point for Gailor, the engcon is “indispensable”. “Every place we go to that machine is there,” Gailor said. “At this point we couldn’t do without it.”

Gailor echoed a feeling seemingly held by every engcon owner about manpower and an engcon, when he said “It’s made us more productive, and that goes back to being able to maintain or increase productivity with less people.”

As Gailor went back to working on the ball field, it was clear that his decision to go with engcon was a home run.