Solid Tooling Engineering, Customer Support Aid Company Success

Serving Southeast Alaska with environmental and geotechnical drilling for the past seven years, Cuff Blakely and his wife have progressed their company CLEARVIEW from a Geoprobe^® 8M to a 66DT.

“We’re old school — having a few custom modifications — but it’s working excellent,” Blakely, owner, said.

When Blakely sought to cover as much scope of work as possible without upgrading to a huge auger machine, they found the DT325 Driven Casing SPT (OTE) system to be the desired solution for their shallow soils to bedrock.

“We have been amazed we can be competitive with our little rig and your new technology,” Blakeley said. “The speed using that tooling system has been amazing.”

They recently completed work on an airport terminal expansion in Sitka, Alaska, completing borings on the apron where planes are parked. They encountered shallow bedrock between four and 12 feet as they moved around the property.

“If we’d done hollow stem auger rather than the 325 OTE, they would have had huge holes in the apron,” Blakely said. “It saved a ton rather than fixing up surfaces they were going to keep using until demolition.”

Much of their work requires mobilizing to islands where the rig sits for long periods of time.

“Using the 325 OTE eliminates having a ton of money in tooling sitting out there,” Blakely said.

Their clients are surprised by the amount of information they can provide them in such a compact footprint.

“They expect us to accomplish four holes, but we do six or seven because we can do it so much faster. Thanks to the 325 OTE we can accomplish more than they expect,” Blakely said. “It’s incredible the scope of work we can complete due to the well-designed tooling. It’s made the difference in being able to make a go of it for us.”

They also credit Geoprobe^® customer support for success in their remote location.

“The support — both for fixing machines and identifying what tooling set up to use — when calling Geoprobe^® is exceptional. The guys take such good care of helping me figure out how to make things work,” Blakely said. “The good tooling engineering and service makes it possible for us to run our business up here in Alaska.”