If ever there was an industry whose personnel fit the description in Bon Jovi’s song Wanted Dead or Alive, it’s the septic pumping industry. “I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride …” Jon Bon Jovi wails, and the collection of steel horses this industry employs is at once huge, varied and impressive.No less impressive is the extent to which our hose wranglers depend on these vehicles, and the loyalty they seem to develop for their own particular workhorses. This month’s Pipelines focuses on the preferences of three pumpers with definite views about the thundering herd that carries them
