When her two older children were young, she worked three days a week, enabling her to go on field trips with the kids and be involved in other ways. When her third child was an infant, she had a nursery at the office and brought him to work each day.
Harper’s Backhoe Service is truly a family business. Debra’ son Dale Huss is the Vice President of the company, but acts more as a general manager. Dale and his sister Julie both worked for their grandparents and mother in the summers while they were in high school. Debra’s daughter Julie helps out some in the office, but has children of her own and is a stay-at-home mother. Debra’s 16-year-old son Isiah now works during the summers fueling equipment and helping in the yard. Her 11-year-old stepson Jake, although not yet old enough to work, loves to hang out in the yard, Debra says.
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(Above) Harper’s Backhoe Service, Inc. and their Case 580SM
backhoe setting electrical boxes. |
Dale went to college and received a degree in communications, but when he was 20, he began working for the family business again.
“It was never my aspiration to make the family business my career,” Dale explains. “But at that time Debra needed help with field supervision so I helped out while I was going to school. Somewhere between the ages of 20 and 25 I realized that I really do enjoy this business, so I stayed.”
Because Dale started his experience at Harper’s Backhoe in the yard, he can operate all the equipment, which he still does occasionally today. For the past eight years, Dale goes out in the field every day, monitoring the work and troubleshooting.
A key employee for the company is Tony Linares, who is the Service Manager. Tony has been with Harper’s Backhoe for 15 years and according to Dale, “is always there and does anything he can to help.”
Harper’s Backhoe Service owns 28 pieces of equipment: different sizes of rubber tire backhoes, excavators, skip loaders and skid steers. Part of Dale’s vision is to continue to add different pieces of equipment to the company’s inventory. They added the skidsteers in 2002, and just added both full-size and mini-excavators in the past year. Dale would like to see Harper’s Backhoe expand its inventory of excavators over the next several years because there are so many different sizes of this particular type of equipment.
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(Below) Case 570MXT skip loader grading for a parking lot. |
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The company’s equipment comes from several manufacturers, one of which is Case. They have purchased both Case 580M Loader/Backhoes and Case 570MXT Loader/Tool Carriers, or skip loaders, from Jake Sanchez of D3 Equipment. Dale says they’ve been working with Case equipment since the inception of the business and with D3 Equipment since 2001, when the dealer took over the Case line.
According to Case’s website, the New M Series 2 loader/backhoes have new Case engines and new
low-effort pilot control options. They feature the “patented 14-foot-over-center backhoe design.” The website says that the Case 570M XT Loader/Tool Carrier has “more lift, better breakout force and a range of attachments for the loader and three-point hitch.”
Much of the work Harper’s 18 field operators get sent to is public works projects. One of their main customers over the past years, Suttles Plumbing in Chatsworth, handles numerous of these public works projects including many involving LAUSD. The company just completed a job for Mesa Contracting Corporation, which is building a substation to handle overload in the power grid for Southern California Edison. Harper’s Backhoe Service spent six months on this job providing anywhere from two to eight pieces of equipment at a time. There were three separate locations for the job on which the company’s operators were completing excavating and grading for underground utilities.
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(Above Left) Case 580SM backhoe compacting plumbing lines.
(Above Right) Harper's employee, Robert Mossett, using a Case 580SM for a footing excavation.
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Bova Contracting, an Orange County based pipeline contractor, has over the years become a valuable customer as well. Harper’s has worked on many projects for Bova throughout Orange County and much of the Inland Empire, providing smaller equipment support for Bova’s larger equipment fleet.
Because Harper’s Backhoe works for other contractors, the work changes daily. Their field operators don’t usually stay on a job for more than one month, but its common for them to go back to a job they’ve been on previously.
Dale feels like reliability sets Harper’s Backhoe apart from other operated equipment rental companies. “Since we’re small and family-owned, we take pride in what we do,” Dale says. “If a customer calls asking for a piece of equipment, we try our best to get it, but we don’t string them along if we don’t have it.”
The company has seen steady growth each year. Debra says she wants to see Harper’s Backhoe Service grow at a pace that “we can always take care of our customers.”
Dale feels that the company’s employees play a big part in the company’s growth. And yet, finding quality operators that have a wide range of skills is one of the challenges the company faces. “It’s not always easy to find an operator that can do all the different tasks that our customers require,” he says. “Our customers cover the whole spectrum of construction.”
Harper’s Backhoe Service is based in Stanton and sends its operated equipment to projects throughout Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
For more information look online at
www.harpersbackhoe.com or call (714) 826-9740. Cc
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(Left) Tony Linares, Service Manager, Harper’s Backhoe Service, Inc. (Right) Dale Huss, Vice President, Harper’s Backhoe Service, Inc.
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Debra began running the business for her parents, and in 1987 when they decided to retire, she bought the business. Bill and Val continued to help Debra out once she bought the business, and Debra says their experience was invaluable.