As we head towards Christmas and the New Year, I found myself taking a look back to our early days and some of the innovations we introduced and projects we had undertaken in the past. It’s amazing when you look back and compare how things move on. I have to say, we found ourselves saying "did we really do it like that".

Back then – 2008/9 - we were the first company to use our machines to pull material over distance. At that time our first attempts were to use 250mm twin wall plastic pipework connected to the machines – mainly to firstly prove that the machines were capable of pulling over distance. And they were.

We then bought in a mini tracked vehicle "The Mooner" that could connect to this pipework to remove the manual handling element. Another first.

Later we sourced dedicated extension pipework, hardwearing and flexible. We also decided to replace the Mooner with larger reliable remotely controlled vehicles and decided to adopt and adapt Brokks for this purpose, another first.

So, looking back it was interesting to see how we started on developing new techniques and equipment allowing us to arrive at where we are today. And pleasing to now see our developments being embraced by many other suction excavation service providers.

We thought sharing some images of these early attempts and projects would be both interesting and amusing......

An early project using twin wall plastic pipe to pull material over distance.

Why twin wall plastic? Pipe needed to be replaced! We tore through this very rapidly.

First purchase of dedicated high impact/friction resistant reinforced flexible extension piping.

Material that we needed to remove. Abrasive filter stone from water treatment works filter beds.

The Mooner back in 2009/10

This was our first large scale project at moving material that we undertook. Prior to this we had moved material from distances of around 30mtrs or less and mainly soils or type one. Here we were faced with a heavy abrasive stone and pulling these over distances of 60mtrs plus.

Using the twin wall plastic pipe, not surprisingly, we soon found this wore through and needed replacing.

These early days were very much trial and error, a learning curb.

Through these lessons learnt, on this and other projects, we soon sourced new extension pipework from Europe that could cope with abrasive materials. We also introduced equipment to reduce or remove manual handling by utilising a mini tracked manual or remotely controlled vehicle that connected to this new pipework.

Today, we operate an incredible range of suction excavator support equipment allowing our fleet of road and rail-based machines to tackle the most challenging projects.

What a journey it’s been to get to where we are.

Our first attempt to introduce a mini tracked manually or remotely operated pipe feeding machine to remove manual handling as much as possible.