Brothers Keith and Jeff Newhouse founded JK Trenching in Freedom, Wisconsin, shortly after Keith graduated high school in 1996. During the summer, a three-man crew consisting of just Jeff, Keith and their dad, Vernon, stays busy by providing trenching, vacuum excavation and horizontal drilling.
One tool JK Trenching uses the most isn’t a trencher, a vacuum or a mini-excavator, however. It’s a Ditch Witch 950R/T locator.
“We can locate anything that conducts,” co-owner Keith Newhouse says.
The 950R/T locates buried telephone, CATV, power, gas and water lines. In active mode, it transmits via direct-line connection, induction clamp or induced broadcast signals. In passive mode, the receiver detects signals generated by 31 kHz (CATV) and 50/60 Hz power, as well as re-radiated radio frequencies. In beacon mode, it detects signals from optional beacons to locate nonmetallic service lines.
JK Trenching purchased the device in 2002 when the owners realized they needed one for all the horizontal drilling work they were doing for electrical contractors.
“We were going underneath driveways and sidewalks and small roadways,” Newhouse says. “The main reason we bought the equipment was to locate the depth consistency of our bores.”
Now they use the 950R/T for more than that, and it goes with them whenever they do a job or an estimate.
“We start looking around the yard to see what we need to cross and how much time it is going to take,” Newhouse says. “We pull it out and hook up to the gas line, the phone line, cable line, whatever, to get an idea of how deep it is and what we’ll have to do to cross it, because that fluctuates the bid.”
Customers notice the extra effort. “I think it shows that we actually care and that we’re not just out there to inflate the bid. We’re trying to keep the cost down for them,” Newhouse says.
The 950R/T offers simultaneous 8 and 29 kHz transmission, so an alternate signal is available if one is hard to detect. An 80 kHz signal is also available, and that is helpful in locating old tracer wires and pipes with insulators. The locator also comes with a backlit LCD that offers visibility in low-light conditions.
“We couldn’t do what we do without it,” Newhouse says. “It’s a necessity you have to have.”
To read more how brothers Jeff and Keith Newhouse have carved out their niche, growing JK Trenching from a part-time venture into a thriving full-time enterprise, read the profile "A Business Explosion," in the January/February debut issue of Dig Different.
