Keith Huber was a Vacuum Truck Pioneer
Keith L. Huber, a vacuum truck pioneer who played an integral role in growing the efficiency of the liquid waste industry, died May 29 in a tractor accident on his family farm in LaFayette, Ill. He was 67.
Huber’s Gulfport, Miss., company, Keith Huber Inc., was started in 1982 with its first product, the Dominator vacuum truck, still a mainstay of the industry. The company would rise to be known as the largest independent manufacturer of vacuum loading equipment in the U.S.
Huber was killed when a tractor he was operating overturned on the farm where he grew up in northwestern Illinois. At the time of the accident, Huber was restoring the farm to its appearance in the 1950s, according to Al Klaser, vice president of Keith Huber Inc.
“He was doing what he loved to do. It was his passion,’’ Klaser said of Huber’s restoration of the farm and a number of vintage Plymouths.
After growing up in Galva, Ill., Huber moved to the Gulf Coast and made his lasting mark in business. In addition to the vacuum truck business, Huber had extensive real estate holdings around Gulfport, including the 45-acre industrial park where the truck-building company is located, Klaser said.
One of Huber’s innovations, the King Vac, became a go-to tool for pumpers in the late 1980s. In a 2004 interview with COLE Publishing, Huber said the King Vac “revolutionized vacuum equipment by producing both high air flow and deep vacuum. It was totally different from anything that had been done before.’’
The reputation of the King Vac was cemented in 1989 when it was discovered to be the perfect tool to unload skimmers that cleaned oil pulled from Alaska’s Prince William Sound following the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
In 2004, Huber was recognized as one of a number of industry pioneers in a series of feature stories in Pumper and Cleaner.
In the story, he recalled how his father released him from an obligation to work the family farm after one of Huber’s tinkering projects yielded a popular snowmobile design.
Huber had taken his snowmobile to the Minnesota State Fair, and quickly received more orders for the product than he could produce. So he sold the design and his inventory to Mallard Coach, which manufactured the snowmobile under the Sno-Wing brand.
“My father said, ‘Son, you made more money with that one sale than your dad has in his entire life of farming, so I guess I’m going to have to let you do what you love to do,’’’ Huber recalled. He would say that he started tinkering with machinery as a child, then somewhere along the line figured out, “it came incredibly easy for me. I guess Beethoven was born with his innate ability and I was born with mine in machinery design.’’
Before he turned his attention to vacuum trucks, Huber was credited with creating the first production model electronically controlled four-wheel golf car.
Klaser said the company is poised to move forward to build on its founder’s legacy. He credited Huber for putting capable people in place to carry the company forward.
“We’re certainly going to miss him, but we’re well-prepared to move forward,’’ Klaser said. “We really don’t expect to skip a beat, and that’s the way he would have wanted it.’’
Memorials in Huber’s name may be made to the Maxine Huber Memorial Summer Camp Fund at Messiah Lutheran Church, 317 SW Third St., Galva, IL 61434, or Palmer College of Chiropractic, 1000 Brady St., Davenport, IA 52803.
Infiltrator Systems Launches Wastewater Web Site
Infiltrator Systems Inc. has launched its updated Web site, with an emphasis on wastewater treatment. The site (www.infiltrator
systems.com) includes information on product lines, downloadable performance data, case studies, owner’s manuals and product catalogs.
