To call J. Angelo Industries a blue-collar success story is almost literally true. The New York state hydroexcavation company was founded on the belief that long, hard days with rolled-up work-shirt sleeves are the keys to building a business.
“I haven’t worn a regular shirt without my name on it for three years now,” says Christopher “Chris” J. Angelo, co-owner of the company bearing his name. “I walk and talk and breathe the business.”
Three years ago is when Chris and his brother John Angelo decided to formally enter an industry they had grown up around and knew well. It was part of their heritage, and the brothers decided to build on it.
Their father and an uncle, Joseph and Albert Angelo, operated a pipe inspection and cleaning company for nearly 20 years in the Poughkeepsie area of New York. In 1986, Chris had rode a thousand miles to Madison, Wisconsin, with his father to pick up and drive home a two-year-old Vactor 810 hydrovac unit. That long-distance rumbling ride behind the truck’s nose reel was the family’s introduction to hydrovac equipment.
“I grew up around it,” Chris recalls of his father’s sewer pipe-cleaning work. “I was able to be on jobs with my dad, getting my hands dirty, operating a truck when I was 12 or 13 and then in high school.”
When his father sold the business in 2004 after receiving an engineering offer, his sons went in different directions. John got into trucking; Chris contemplated an architectural career, but then a drunken driver involved him in an accident in which Chris suffered a spinal cord injury. “It has taken awhile to get back,” he says from the perspective of 12 years’ painful recovery. “But I go to work every day.”
Since 2015, “work” has been owning and operating J. Angelo Industries. “My brother was driving trucks and one day we looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s do what we know.’ Growing up the way we did, working for our dad, we knew what we were doing when we started the company, and here we are.”
So Chris, now 37, and his younger brother have a 3-year-old company with roots that go back more than 30 years. “We don’t feel like we are 3 years old,” Chris says of the enterprise. “When you have been around the industry as long as we have, it is sort of an extension of what we were doing with our dad. We learned a lot from him — what to do and, even more so, what not to do.”
FINDING A WAY TO DIG
The brothers bought a 1990 Vac-Con V390T with a big Ford diesel engine, a 9-yard debris body and a three-stage compressor capable of producing 7,400 cfm of vacuum. “It was very affordable, and we were able to bring the machine up to spec,” Chris says. “We use it almost every day, at least three times a week. It has saved the day for us more than a couple of times.”
At the start, they opted to use a power-washer pressurized unit to break soil apart. That proved inadequate. “After a few jobs, we could see we had to step up our game,” Chris says. They bought a second truck, a 1994 Vac-Con V312T tandem axle unit. Working with Vac-Con, they outfitted it with a boiler and hydroexcavation tools. The old truck does not have a hydrostatic transmission, which Chris considers something of an advantage because the unit’s powertrain is totally dedicated to digging.
“We knew hot water was the only way to go, especially up here in the winter,” Chris says of the addition of the boiler. “Plus, we have clay we have to cut through. That hot water gets the job done. It’s also a big advantage in cleaning out pump stations. It cuts the grease off the walls real fast.”
FINDING THE WORK
J. Angelo Industries is headquartered in Wappingers Falls, a village south of Poughkeepsie. The company’s customers mostly are municipal authorities in and around the city. Older hydrovac companies already had locked up industrial clients. “The other companies absorbed much of the industry so at first it was like picking up crumbs.”
In the beginning, the brothers traveled as far as the Bronx in New York City to find jobs, but now mostly work within a 75-mile radius of Wappingers Falls. The early crumbs have turned into a three-layer cake with frosting. “We are just taking care of good clients,” Chris says. “A lot of people were left without hydroexcavation services until we helped them.” Referrals are keeping them busy.
A typical hydroexcavation call for the company is to locate a gas line or a waterline, a relatively small utility potholing job. But not all jobs are small. The biggest digging project the brothers have undertaken was repair of a broken sewer-stormwater combination line in Poughkeepsie. It was a delicate excavation because a waterline in poor condition was situated atop the bigger one. The brothers dug a trench 10 feet deep and 300 feet long to uncover the fault, replaced the 22-inch sewer main and 6-inch water main, and restored services to homes in three days.
J. Angelo Industries clients are mostly located in Dutchess and Westchester counties and the Hudson River Valley. Dutchess is home to lots of rocks of different kinds — molten, pressure-squeezed and sedimentary. This geological characteristic of the terrain does not always make for happy hydrovacing. “Some days we get nothing but rock, big rocks,” Chris says. “That makes it rough.”
His usual procedure when encountering a miniboulder is to use the hydroexcavator to suck soil from around its edges till it is well-exposed, then run a strap around it, and lift it from the hole with the boom. For larger rocks, he turns to the company’s Kubota mini-excavator. Closer to the river, the digging challenge is clay, the long-ago deposits from glacial runoff. In the 19th century, the clay was the principal building block for brick-making plants south of Poughkeepsie. Today, it is just a gummy challenge for Chris.
A ONE-STOP SHOP
The company provides a variety of other services, including pipe-cleaning and inspection, pump station maintenance, jetting, and CCTV inspections. On company shelves are four cameras — two of them Aries Industries, including a crawler for pipes up to 24 inches in diameter, and an Envirosight pole camera for manhole inspections.
Chris hangs his hat on the fact that company clients know J. Angelo Industries will take care of every facet of an underground problem. That is, a failed pipeline will be located, exposed, camera-inspected, repaired and the hole closed again. “We are a one-stop shop. Customers know they don’t have to hire another contractor to come in behind us and finish up. Clients can lean on us because we know what we’re doing.”
The brothers are comfortable with the old but more than ready to try the new. The brothers pamper their old hydrovac trucks, loading them onto a low-boy trailer and carting them to more distant job sites. In terms of new things, Chris says he’s looking into cured-in-place pipe repair. “I love what that offers. I’ve been in situations where I would have loved to have had it. We definitely will include it in the services we offer going forward.”
Hydrovac work is the core of J. Angelo Industries’ business, obviously. “I try to use the hydro trucks as much as possible,” Chris says, noting that it is a versatile and safe means of excavating. “Breaking a waterline or a gas line? I’ve never done that with a hydrovac. So whether it is finding a small valve or emptying a catch basin 15 feet underground, the hydrovac is a tool in my bag I use at least three or four times every week.”
STAYING SMALL
Does his business model envision expansion and growth of the company? Chris isn’t gung-ho about it. Though J. Angelo Industries has doubled in size in terms of equipment and clients, Chris believes expansion is hard and not always worth it.
“Sometimes it comes down to making more money just to have more problems,” Chris says. “Our equipment is paid for. We don’t have tons of overhead weighing us down. In this industry, it’s hard to find people who know what they’re doing. Our growth to this point has been for our clients, and I think what we have going on with our clients is special.”
Chris coined an expression that conveys his business philosophy: Stay small and keep it all. “To do that, you have to do it all. My brother and I do, every day.” Wearing all the hats worn by small-business owners — operator, mechanic, secretary, marketing person — means many days lack enough hours to accomplish everything. “When you own your own business, every day is a workday. To have a successful business, you have to sacrifice for the brand.”
Despite his robust work ethic, Chris doesn’t come across as a workaholic in danger of burning out. He and his brother believe that J. Angelo Industries after three years is operating at a sustainable pace. “We are going to be here for a while,” he says. “My son Carmine is 7 years old, and he is proud of the name on the trucks. He will be around us as he grows up, and maybe one day he’ll take over the company and make it his own.”
Historic digs
Digging in Colonial American soils can be more interesting than utility digging in some places farther west in the country. Sometimes the excavations are archaeologically interesting.
J. Angelo Industries hydroexcavates in and around the Hudson River Valley city of Poughkeepsie, New York. It is an area and town steeped in Native American culture. The city is old by American standards, with one house dating to 1728 and numerous 19th-century structures.
Consequently, waterlines and sewer lines running from historic buildings pass through strata of earth containing artifacts from earlier eras. So far, J. Angelo Industries hydrovac operators have not turned up any significant finds.
“We did a dig down on Water Street in Poughkeepsie near the river in the historic part of town,” recalls Christopher “Chris” J. Angelo, co-owner. “A client had an old lead pipe waterline still in service for a house with an elderly lady tenant. We worked with the city hand in hand on that one.”
During the excavation, Angelo uncovered and retrieved glass bottles from the 1920s and ’30s — interesting but not genuine treasure. However, the work was done almost in the shadow of the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge that dates from 1889. In 2009, the closed bridge was repurposed into a walkway for people to cross the Hudson more than 200 feet above the water. Running for more than a mile, it is the longest elevated pedestrian bridge in the world.
Vintage house on one side of the working hydrovac; historic bridge on the other. Just another day of digging in Poughkeepsie.
