The boys are older. The toys are bigger. And it's not the same old sandlot, that's for sure. But the heart of the kid is still very present at DMH Excavating, started in December 2006 by Dave Hieb.
The lure of the dirt pile and shovel never quite left Hieb and his brother, who now lives in Tennessee and started hauling dirt there with a truck he had fixed up for someone else.
"He was in it about a year or so before me and said, 'You need to get into this. This is a good deal,'" Hieb recalls.
The brothers' shared fascination with excavation equipment -- the bulldozers, backhoes, payloaders, and more -- goes way back.
"We were farm kids in North Dakota. We played in the dirt," he says.
In the category of "strange, but true," a fire fueled their passion.
"When we were little guys, a Coast-to-Coast hardware store caught on fire. A bunch of Tonka toys and metal toys like that were smoke-damaged, even burnt a little," he says.
"When that happened, dad went to town one day and came home with a whole pickup load of toys that he gave very little for, I'm sure," says Hieb. "We would spend hours playing with them. It was in our blood."
Today, years after careers in agriculture and owning a remodeling company, Hieb's fleet of trucks, trailers, dozers, backhoe, and Bobcat stands ready to prepare land, do pad sites, push out trees, and his favorite activity: make ponds.
"I like the creativity. I'm kind of like an artist with a blade," says Hieb.
