It’s not hard to hear the passion Mike Flaherty has for his company. Now owner of Advanced Pollution Control (APC) Corporation, Flaherty has been involved with the company since 1977, when his dad owned it. His passion is just as strong now as it was 40 years ago.
“We are hard to compete against because there’s quite a lot of pride here,” says Flaherty, 64. “To last 42 years I think is an accomplishment, and we still have some of the same customers we had back then.”
The company, based in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, started off with a specialty in serving power plants and wastewater treatment plants. Through the years, the business has evolved to include utility locating and other vacuum excavation services. Three things haven’t changed; dedication to customers, a family-like atmosphere and hardworking crews.
SERVICES TAKING OFF
Flaherty’s dad, known affectionately as Big Mike, started the company in 1975. He saw a need for power plant cleanup work in the Boston area and bought his first jet/vac truck. About 95 percent of the initial workload was servicing power plants, and water and wastewater treatment plants. Those services expanded over time, and now the company provides vacuum excavation for construction companies.
“It’s a service that has taken off for us,” Flaherty says. “Construction companies are now realizing that vacuum excavation saves them a lot of collateral damage because they aren’t striking water or gas lines. It’s not as fast as an excavator, but it certainly has its place.”
The company’s fleet now consists of nine GapVax combination units. The newest truck arrived in March 2016, and like the others, has a stainless steel tank. “They’re all stainless steel,” Flaherty says. “I spend a little extra in the beginning, and the trucks are very dependable and don’t rust out. It takes a lot more punishment before it’ll deform or needs to be replaced.”
APC crews try to perform dry vacuum instead of hydroexcavation because it allows them to backfill with dry material. “The dry stuff is far easier to control,” Flaherty says. “It’s neater to work with than mud slurry and saves our customers money. We never bring waste from one job to another location due to environmental regulations, so if we can’t use what we excavate, the customer has to pay for it to be dumped.”
To allow for air excavation, the company has outfitted each truck with a 185 cfm air compressor.
Not long after starting vacuum excavation, Flaherty saw another need in the area and branched off into servicing railways. Two hydrovac units are fitted with high-rail systems.
“We do about 15 percent of our business with the high-rail trucks,” Flaherty says. “We’re called out to derailments and things like that. You never know when you’re going to get busy.”
BUILDING A DEPENDABLE CREW
Having a readily available crew capable of doing any job is important when taking on spur-of-the-moment jobs. Flaherty is proud of his crew of 15.
“The big thing that makes a difference with our people is their tenure,” Flaherty says. One operator, Mike Darmetko, has been with the company for 38 years, and operations manager Rick Gay for 35 years. Operator Jim Silva has been with the company for 15 years. The rest of the workforce averages eight years of experience. “When we send out a truck, we’re sending out a very capable, well-paid union operator who has seen a lot of different jobs and knows how to do the jobs the most efficient and safest way.”
Flaherty attracts and keeps employees by treating them right. He makes sure his crew gets 40 hours of work a week throughout the year. The company offers holiday and vacation pay, as well as sick time. “The fellas seem to care about the company and they want to see it do well so that we’re out working and not staying here in the maintenance facility,” Flaherty says. “We want to be making money, not losing money.”
Even though nearing retirement age, Flaherty will still join crews on job sites, put the work clothes on and start digging. “I’m happy while I’m doing it,” he says. “If you have dependable equipment and a happy crew, it’s a winning situation. What I see with our competition is crews that don’t care as much, so the job takes longer and there’s a level of frustration with them.”
A SAFETY FOCUS
An experienced crew also helps with safety measures. The company provides regular safety training seminars for confined-space entry, lockout/tagout and other typical procedures. “We’ll also do respirator training, personal fall protection, hearing protection, hazard communication and forklift safety, and we’ll go over personal protective equipment,” Flaherty says. “We try to get the jobs done as quickly and safely as possible, and try to keep our reputation as a good company.”
The safety focus doesn’t stop at the shop — crews are always thinking safety on the job. If heading to a power plant job, crews will pull one of the company’s 14-foot enclosed safety trailers. Flaherty put together APC’s first safety trailers in 1980, and the equipment they carry has advanced in quantity and sophistication.
“They’re equipped with breathing equipment for working in bad air in confined spaces,” Flaherty says. The trailers have cascade breathing systems with eight 4-foot bottles, each with 250 cubic feet of air, good for about eight hours each.
“A hose no longer than 300 feet connects the bottles to a worker’s personalized breathing mask. A five-minute emergency escape breathing bottle is attached to each workers’ belt. We don’t charge for it unless we have to use it, but we have it all if the air changes or something bad happens. We just go into a different mode and no one gets hurt.”
The safety trailers also carry rescue and retrieval tripods used in confined spaces. Tripods can be placed over a manhole to raise and lower workers, and to retrieve them if something goes wrong. Other fall-protection and safety equipment brought to the job include winches and beam trolleys, Tyvek suits from DuPont Personal Protection (paper coveralls that protect workers’ clothing from contact with waste), encapsulated suits, ventilation fans, rain gear, and extra rubber boots and gloves.
VACUUMING COAL
One time when crews made sure to have the safety trailer with breathing tanks was in November, when the company was hired to clean coal silos at a power plant. The coal was burning within the silos. “The methane gas inside of it was something we had to be careful of,” Flaherty says.
APC workers ran 200 feet of aluminum pipes from the fourth floor of the power plant, where the coal was, down to the trucks and vacuumed the coal that was burning. They used a conveyor belt system beneath the silos to get the coal moving to the vacuum hose.
“When the methane got too high, we let the plant know we didn’t want to continue working because it was going to be a possible explosion,” Flaherty says. “They wetted down the fire and then we were able to continue.”
Another vacuum excavation company was also on the job site, but Flaherty says his team out-produced the competitor, four to one: “It was because our trucks were maintained better and our crew knew what they were doing better.”
APC removed 77 truckloads of coal, averaging about 18 trucks a day. The job was finished in about four days.
MAINTAINING THE REPUTATION
Even after 42 years in operation, Flaherty doesn’t take anything for granted. He still wants to see sales increase, pick up some new power plant jobs and establish the company as the top vacuum excavation contractor in New England.
“I’d like to get some of the new power plants on board with us cleaning water filtration tanks or things like that,” Flaherty says. “We’re still going to work on sewage treatment plants and just try to get more business and keep everyone employed, and keep our reputation as high as it’s always been.”
Going with yellow
It’s not hard to spot one of APC Corporation’s nine GapVax hydroexcavators. The machines are painted a pale yellow from the Peterbilt chassis to the debris tank.
“There are some different options on each truck and there are improvements that the manufacturer has made,” says APC owner Mike Flaherty. “The fellas have to get trained on everything so when they are out in the field they know how to work everything and work it safely.”
All nine tri-axle hydrovacs have 16-yard debris tanks and hold 3,200 gallons. After the company takes ownership of a machine, crews install a 185 cfm air compressor on it to allow for air excavation. The trucks also have hot- and cold-water pressure washers.
The color choice goes back to when Flaherty’s dad founded the company in 1975. When he bought his first vacuum truck he didn’t have a lot of money to paint it. That’s when longtime family friend Ed Porter told him he was throwing away some yellow paint — three 5-gallon cans of it. “We painted one truck and it looked pretty good, and we’ve stayed with that color ever since,” Flaherty says.
Tailored to the job
When APC Corporation gets the call to vacuum out mussels and shells from power plant intake pipes, the company puts to use its custom-made dump containers.
“We do a lot of vacuuming of shells at power plants with their intake pipes and the trucks suck in a lot of water,” says APC owner Mike Flaherty. “To handle all that water, we have dewatering containers. There are perforations inside the regular containers so the water will all go back into the ocean, leaving behind the mussels and shells.”
It wasn’t always that easy. Until about 15 years ago, the company, based in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, used regular dump containers and then had to vacuum out the water: “It just wasn’t working out real well.”
The company has numerous regular containers (Galbreath) and roll-off trucks built by Beam Truck & Body. The seven GMC crew cab diesel pickup trucks are equipped with tools the crew might need — shovels, boots and other gear.
“Over the 40-some years we’ve been in business, I’ve tried to buy equipment so that we don’t have to rely on other people,” Flaherty says. “I like to control the job from the phone call to the end.”
