November 2014, Vol. 69, No. 11
Features
HammerHead Trenchless Equipment Celebrates 25 years
Special to Underground Construction
Jon Haas had been using piercing tools as part of a military experiment, installing pipes under roads and runways. After completing some of the bores, he was puzzled to see water coming from an elevated fill section of the pavement he was working on. The only possible explanation for water at this highpoint was that it must have been trapped under the pavement. The bore from the piercing tool released it.
Questioning if he was onto something, he took his observations to a university professor, who agreed that trapped water could make pavement joints behave like diaphragm pumps as heavy wheel loads passed over them. Left unchecked, the dynamic loading condition would result in pavement faulting, a cause of premature failure.
Haas patented his solution in the late 1980s as transverse innerflow channel, often referred to as “tic drains,” and founded Drainage Technologies, an installation service company using those same pneumatic ground-piercing tools.
Haas said, “We were working right up under the road surface. The piercing tools I originally bought struggled in 96 percent compaction or greater. We needed more power in tough conditions without failure.”
A visionary entrepreneur, Haas figured that by making his own tools he could increase performance, wearability and serviceability compared to tools that were currently on the market. Haas established Earth Tool Company LLC to support his service company.
Designed in a home garage and manufactured at first in a renovated chicken coop, that one improved piercing tool design grew to become a family of products that now includes 27 models, an extensive line of HDD tooling and accessories, a full line of pipe ramming and pipe bursting products including the world’s largest and most powerful rammer, and lateral cured-in-place-pipe (CIPP) system and consumables.
Earth Tool Company, known to most customers as HammerHead Trenchless Equipment, turned 25 in May of this year. Its silver anniversary provides an occasion to reflect on its evolution.
With the continuous growth of HammerHead, the company recently expanded into new facilities
Independence Day
At a Fourth of July cookout in 1988, Haas talked with Rob Crane, an experimental mechanic with a 20-year career at Harley Davidson. They had been friends since junior high school.
“I had never heard of a piercing tool before,” Crane said. “I had no idea what he was talking about.” But Crane promised in the morning he’d have a look at one Haas had been using.
Crane broke the bench vise in his garage workshop trying to open the tool. After he reassembled the missile-like instrument, he couldn’t keep it from falling apart when they tested it. “First thing we need to do,” Crane announced to Haas, “is make one we can open.”
Crane took it to Steve Wentworth, an analytical engineer at Harley Davidson. Wentworth assessed the piercing tool and its components to be “very primitive in design and materials.”
They weren’t just test lab partners but part of a Camel Pro Series racing team as well. Wentworth raced the first-ever Buell motorcycle to run on an open track. Crane tuned it. Both left motorcycle racing, spending all their free time evenings and weekends developing a better piercing tool. Within a year, they had left Harley Davidson to become partners with Haas in the business venture.
Haas, Crane and Wentworth all remarked how well their skill sets complemented each other for the project. Haas had good technical knowledge of the tooling. He was an astute businessman who bore financial responsibility for the startup until it was ready to take off, and he secured confidentiality agreements with companies capable of supplying parts to his company’s specifications.
Wentworth contributed his professional training and career experience as an applied mechanics engineer. After joining Harley Davidson, he focused in large part on cyclic fatigue analysis: how to make parts of motorcycles survive vibration longer. It was a perfect background for improving the design of pneumatic piercing tools.
While Wentworth analyzed each change and made improvement suggestions, Crane proved the theories out on an accelerated fatigue testing rig of his own design.
Wentworth said that creating the first tool generated seven new patents, including one for its tail bolt design and another for a body-forming process. They could have registered a lot more patents, he said, but they were too busy building.
Having retired from the company due to illness, Haas still beams when he mentions its durability. “Wear it out? I’m still excited to hear a customer wore one out. It means the customer made a heck of a lot of money with HammerHead equipment!”
Branding it the HammerHead Mole, the improved 3-inch piercing tool took the market by storm. Haas said, “Our three-page, five-year business plan to become number one in the industry was achieved in just three years.”
HammerHead became a popular nickname for Earth Tool Company. The company conducts official business as Earth Tool Company LLC, but its website displays the more familiar name, HammerHead Trenchless Equipment.
Customer focus
As departmentalized professionals in a corporate setting, Wentworth said he and Crane hadn’t had much to do with customers directly. “When we first heard Jon describe his vision of customer service, it made us nervous. Neither Rob nor I thought a company could afford that level of customer attention without going bankrupt.
“But Jon was right. I remember when one of our first customers in Minnesota needed assistance. Rob dropped what he was doing and four hours later he was standing side-by-side with that customer in the field, solving the problem together with him until 2 a.m.”
Wentworth said the secret lay in production efficiency. “Designing an efficient manufacturing process meant we could focus more on customer service than other companies might be able to.”
Crane said HammerHead is well known for its no-nonsense approach to customer relations. “Our customers are hardworking folks that don’t want to listen to excuses, and a field failure costs money. So we concentrate on helping them make money.”
The 34-inch rammer is the latest addition to the pipe ramming line of Hammers. Weighing in at nearly 30,000 pounds, it is the world’s largest hammer.
Ramming, bursting, piercing and more
Expanding HammerHead’s product line to include pipe ramming was a logical step, Wentworth said, since the pipe ramming process is similar to the piercing process. “But next came pipe bursting. That introduced us to something totally new – mobile equipment.”
During a pneumatic pipe burst, a winch pulls a pneumatic tool and bursting head through the existing pipe, which draws replacement pipe behind itself as it goes. Crane and Wentworth applied the same development principles as before, improving design and using superior materials. The result was the HammerHead HydroGuide product line.
Although the pipe bursting method had been doing well in Europe for some time, the U.S. wasn’t using it yet. It became clear that HammerHead would need to educate the market first, preparing it for the advantages of pipe bursting.
Wentworth said market education requires a unique skill set, but HammerHead consistently finds the right people to share with the industry. They give project designers and customers the confidence they need to adopt new methods – often before there are any application examples yet in their own regions.
The fiber boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s boosted HammerHead mole sales. It was a matter of having the right tool on the market at the right time.
Until the advent of horizontal directional drilling, Wentworth said HammerHead had just been “supportive suppliers.”
“But we were drawn in by the sheer demand for horizontal drilling equipment. Again we put our process to work, which resulted in our TriHawk rock tooling and housings, SplineLok and Hawkeye connections and the ROUGHNECK air hammer products.”
“This past year we came out with our CIPP product lines including composite inversion drums, complete trailer packages, high quality resins and liners all available for purchase on a B2B website.”
HammerHead community
Crane said: “I’m really proud of the company and the products we make. But I’m proudest of our people. A lot of them came to us out of high school and started by cleaning up evenings or weekends. One guy comes to mind right away. He started out in high school sweeping floors. Today he’s an exceptionally skilled machinist with us.
“We find their abilities and fit them in. HammerHead provides the training to help them excel at what they like to do. But it’s more than that. We know them. We see them marry, grow their families. We celebrate birthdays and holidays together. We invite their families to take part in company events. HammerHead is more than a team. HammerHead is a community.”
HammerHead CEO Brian Metcalf, who has been with the company for more than seven years, echoed Crane’s sentiments about the close-knit workforce and stable leadership. Together they have weathered changes in the market and company ownership. Proud as Metcalf is of HammerHead’s product lines, he said he is most proud of HammerHead’s people.
“Our employees create a culture of customer satisfaction. Their dedication has doubled the company’s size in a short period of time. When we transitioned successfully from private equity ownership to being part of a privately held, longstanding industry leader like Charles Machine Works, our employees embraced the change. Their contribution throughout this past quarter century bleeds red and black.”
Tiffany Sewell-Howard, CEO of The Charles Machine Works Inc., added, “The HammerHead brand has grown significantly over the past 25 years and we are very proud to have them as part of the CMW family of companies. They are an instrumental part of achieving our vision of The Underground Authority for the next 25 years.”
Metcalf predicted HammerHead would see significant growth from its core market segments, combined with new innovative solutions to meet customer needs at their jobsites worldwide. Metcalf explained, “That’s because we keep our eyes wide open, asking, ‘What’s the customer going to need next?’ Find the need. Then fill the need with products the customer can afford and products he can use to his benefit.”
With the goal of becoming a full trenchless solutions provider to the plumbing industry, HammerHead launched its CIPP lining product line in 2013.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
HammerHead, (800) 331-6653, www.hammerheadmole.com
HammerHead 25-Year Timeline
1989 May 9 – Jon Haas, Steven Wentworth and Robert Crane found Earth Tool Company; HammerHead Mole piercing tool – patented tail-bolt design permits serviceability in field.
1992 HammerHead large diameter pipe ramming tools include patented reverse feature – simplifies removal of tool from collets.
1994 HammerHead reversible pneumatic pipe bursting tools, hydrostatic winches and patented manhole exit method.
1995 Patented Power Port ¼-turn reverse feature for piercing tools.
1997 HammerHead static pipe bursting systems and accessories.
1998 HammerHead enters HDD tooling market with patented TriHawk rock drilling heads and SplineLok connection systems.
2002 PortaBurst PB30, 30-ton static pipe bursting system.
2003 HydroBurst HB125 static pipe bursting system.
2004 HammerHead HydroGuide HG12 automated boom winch.
2005 TriHawk V cobble dirt drill bit for directional drilling.
2007 Patented Hawkeye quick connect HDD tooling system.
2008 Catamount reciprocating head pneumatic piercing tool featuring patented air spring design.
2010 HammerHead is acquired by The Charles Machine Works Co.
2011 HammerHead TriHawk HD product line and Roughneck rock air hammer for the HDD market.
2012 MoleTrac piercing tool tracking system released.
2013 34-inch ramming hammer, world’s largest, launched at the Underground Construction Technologies (UCT) show in Houston; Launches HydraLiner CIPP lateral lining system
2014 May 9 marks 25th anniversary
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