Pumper Truck Pipeline

Used trucks always find a home in this arrangement between two Wisconsin pumpers.
Pumper Truck Pipeline
Mike's Septic Service's 2012 Kenworth T800 truck with a 4,300-gallon tank and Masport pump built by Imperial Industries.

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Mike Oberg likes to keep the fleet of vacuum trucks at Mike’s Septic Service up to date. The Eagle River, Wisconsin-based business runs three Kenworths, which are kept on the road daily for most of the year, covering a 10-county service area in northern Wisconsin and parts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Currently Oberg has a 2010 T800 semi-tractor tanker with a 6,500-gallon tank built out by Central Wisconsin Body and Hoist and a Masport pump; a 2012 T800 tandem-axle with a 4,300-gallon tank and Masport pump built by Imperial Industries; and a 2015 T880 tri-axle with a 5,200-gallon tank and National Vacuum Equipment blower built by Imperial.

When it comes time to purchase a new rig, he doesn’t have to worry about finding a buyer for the truck being cycled out of the inventory. Oberg has sold four trucks in 22 years. Three of those trucks have gone to the same pumper – Melvin Ecker of Lakeshore Septic Service, three hours south in Chilton, Wisconsin.

That truck pipeline from Oberg’s northern Wisconsin yard to Ecker’s operations began in 1995. That’s when Oberg was preparing to buy his first new truck after two years of business. Oberg sold his used chassis to a company in Chilton where he was having the tank mounted on his new truck. The used truck was scheduled to be turned over to Ecker, a farmer getting into the pumping business. Since then, truck turnover has been a breeze for both contractors.

“He bought the used truck, and then two years later he bought a tank I rejected because it wasn’t sized right for my truck,” Oberg says. “After that he just kept calling me to see when I was going to replace my trucks and wanting to buy them because he knew I ran Kenworths and took good care of them.”

In the past two years, Oberg has sold two more trucks to Ecker, who finds it convenient to stick with the same purple color scheme Oberg uses. “He said he’s going to change their portable toilet truck to purple so it matches the rest of the fleet,” Oberg says.

And truck sale No. 4 between the two pumpers is already in the works.

“His son came to pick up a truck last year and the first thing he did was walk over to my brand-new 2015 truck,” Oberg says. “I said, ‘Come on, that’s not the truck you’re buying.’ He said, ‘I know. I just want to see what I get in 10 years.’”



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