“At the bog, we showed the benefits we can bring to the project,” he said. Seeing that as bordering on overkill and knowing that potential swamp and bog work can also be plentiful in north central Minnesota, he opted instead to purchase the machines himself - and MAE was born. I did, and quickly learned that they are very expensive, both to purchase and to move.”Īccording to Gilbertson’s calculations, in the course of that three-year project, they would have racked up about $2.5 million in mobility charges alone. He suggested we look into a company from Louisiana that manufactures amphibious excavators - machines with pontoons that thrive in the swamps so common down there.
After years of work to get the project permitted, it was finally approved, at which point the head of operations and I looked at each other and began considering the best way to remediate 36 square miles of bog that we couldn’t walk across. “That company had landed a project to handle restoration of 23,000 acres in an area known as the Sax-Zim Bog in northern Minnesota. “Up until about five years ago, I was doing similar work for an equity firm that specializes in wetland mitigation banks around the U.S.,” he said. According to CEO Steve Gilbertson, the company’s origin stems from an unlikely source. Bogs Are BogsĪlthough they bring decades of expertise to the job site, MAE has only been working the shallows for about five years. Along with its newfound productivity, the company has discovered that incorporating the new solution will open the door to additional work, much of which had previously evaded them. The ability to “see” beneath the surface with their machines has proven invaluable in improving overall efficiency and minimizing the risk of over- or undercutting.įor Midwest Amphibious Equipment (MAE), making the move to GPS on two of its specialty excavators is doing precisely that, as the company tackles a huge restoration project on the waterfront in Duluth, Minn. Contractors involved in underwater excavation projects have become some of the most ardent supporters of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based solutions.
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