(Below) Loading trucks with footing dirt.

(Below) Felipe of Jaynes Corporation helping
Mark with footings.

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Mark’s Bobcat & Services, Inc. Appreciates Working With Long-term Clients.

By Tammy Boone
Photos By Terica Messmer
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For the twenty years that Mark Wyckoff has been in business for himself, operating as Mark’s Bobcat & Services, Inc., the key to keeping busy has been hooking up with some great general contractors that use Mark’s services over and over again. He’s been fortunate to do quite a bit of repeat business over the years with West Coast Air, Jaynes Corporation and Healey Construction, all of which he says are “real good companies.”

Mark got his start in the business by working for a general contractor that did structural concrete work. “I got all my training working from them,” he says. He began doing side jobs on the weekends and eventually realized he could make better money by working for himself. In 1987, he and his wife Shari—who is majority owner of the company, with a 51% stake—took out a small business loan and purchased a used dump truck and a bobcat with a backhoe attachment.

These days, Mark owns a Caterpillar 304C CR Mini Hydraulic Excavator, Caterpillar 236B Skid Steer Loader, and 10-wheel dump truck. He rents other pieces of equipment as he needs it. Mark purchased his equipment from Ernie Dobson at Hawthorne Machinery-San Diego.

(Below) Easy loading with CAT equipment.

(Above Left) Jaynes employee keeping things straight. (Above Right) Mark Wyckoff and his CAT 304 Mini Excavator.

According to Caterpillar’s website, the 304C CR Mini Hydraulic Excavator comes “standard with stick mounted brackets, ready to fit a hydraulic thumb. The dozer float enables easy ground leveling for landscaping and finishing applications, as well as more efficient site clean-up.” The 236B Skid Steer Loader has hand and foot throttles that “allow the operator to match engine speed to the task.”

Mark’s Bobcat & Services, Inc. offers a range of services, mostly for commercial and government projects. Mark does grading and recompacting of soil, concrete demolition, and excavation for wet and dry utilities. Many of his jobs are for new school and college buildings.

Mark is currently on a job digging the footings for a new elementary school in San Marcos. He’s working for Jaynes Corporation and the job will take him about a week and a half to complete. A typical job for Mark takes anywhere from one week to a month to complete.

Although most of his work is for commercial projects, he does a fair amount of swimming pool demolition for residential customers. Because the deck of a swimming pool cannot generally support the weight of the excavator, Mark uses an excavator with breakers, and “walks around the top of the pool,” breaking two feet down on the sides and then breaks holes in the bottom of the pool. Once the pool is demolished, Mark fills the site with dirt and recompacts it. The main reason clients have their swimming pools demolished is that replacement costs are much higher than the original cost to install the pool decades before.

Mark, who is also licensed and bonded as a general engineering contractor, hasn’t had other people working for him for the last four years. He says it is easier to do the work himself. He’ll often hire sub-contractors to complete concrete work, paving, and asphalt work, but he does plumbing himself.

Mark and Shari, who is a bookkeeper and handles all the paperwork, are working towards getting their Minority Contractor status, so they can bid jobs requiring minority contractors.

Although Mark’s Bobcat & Services, Inc. is located in Lakeside, Mark also works throughout Riverside and Los Angeles Counties. He has worked at both Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center and Los Alamedas Air Base. The longest job he ever had was at the military base at Twentynine Palms. He worked for West Coast Air trenching for chiller lines. He was on the project for a year and a half, working four 10-hour days and going home on the weekends.

Mark likes the freedom that comes from being an owner/operator. “I can say I don’t want to work one day and go golfing, and I can take vacation when I want to,” he says.

One of the bigger challenges these days is the competition. According to Mark, there are many people who have purchased a dump truck and a piece of equipment and are out there doing the same type of work as Mark. Even though Mark has relied on growing his business by word of mouth and some advertising over the last 18 years, he has noticed a trend in the last two years where he is doing more bidding to get jobs.

For more information call Mark at (619) 572-5753. Cc