East Coast Demolition Relies on Fleet of Minimum-Swing Excavators for Heavy-Duty Jobs

East Coast Demolition is a full-service hazardous material abatement and demolition contractor serving Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina. In the business for over 40 years, its services include the design, management and implementation of abatement and demolition projects ranging from simple residential buildings to complex high-rise structures. “My father started the company and I run it with him and a group of great people,” said Ricky Webb, chief operating officer at East Coast Demolition.

Serving the private, commercial, local, state and federal sectors, East Coast Demolition’s niche is technically complex demolition projects. “What sets us apart from the rest of the competition — and what we like to pride ourselves in — is that we’re a turnkey solution to problems that general contractors and owners might have when looking at a large-scale project,” said Webb.

“We show up with clean equipment, clean trucks, we self-perform a lot of the work. We own 15 excavators and 20 tractors so if there’s a client that has a need on one job and he needs to speed it up, we can shift all of our resources to that one job to push that job along, and then go back and handle the rest of our work. A lot of it is the employees, and just building the company over 40 years that has put us in this position. It’s a lot of hard work. We’ve put the right things in place over time to be able to put us in this position.”

Aiming for Success

The fact that East Coast Demolition has remained successful throughout the highs and lows of the last 40 years says a lot about the company. “We sweat and bleed demolition — it’s what we do,” said Webb. “When it comes down to it, we’re here every single day. We’re grinding it out. We’re getting it done. We don’t want to be a national company. We don’t want to be the largest company. We want to be the best demolition company out there — the most reputable — who takes the most pride in the work that they do. And we want people to want us on their projects and to help people out and to be able to grow this business, not only for our employees, but for the area.”

About the Fleet

East Coast runs a fleet of 15 excavators. In addition to the long-reach specialized demolition excavators the company runs, Webb needed a fleet of excavators that could handle the day-to-day work on heavy-duty demolition sites, but also nimble enough to get around residential areas. “We do a lot of residential demos still,” he said. “We do over 100 houses a year, and we also do a lot of gas stations, convenience stores, we do a lot of shopping centers, and we do a lot of ‘we need you tomorrow’ work.” According to Webb, the company required machines that we could move quickly under its blanket permit — they chose Case Construction’s CX245D SR. “The short-radius machine can get in tight spots. We don’t have to think about this machine being too big for this job or too small for this job. It’s just a perfect all-around machine that we can put anywhere, and we don’t have to second guess it.” The full-sized CX245D SR excavator is designed to provide increased digging and lifting power in confined work areas, and features a minimum-swing-radius design, compact counterweight and modified boom placement that minimizes the machine’s footprint, resulting in a highly productive and maneuverable excavator that’s ideal for restricted operating conditions. “It makes it easier for me and my field manager to be able to put a machine on the job. It’s got plenty of power. It’s able to handle projects that a 300 or 350 could be used on, but it’s out there performing well right beside them.”

The excavators have been built to achieve faster cycle times and improved control. An electronically controlled hydraulic pump and larger control and solenoid valves boost breakout forces, increase lifting strength and improve responsiveness. These features combine with the Case Intelligent Hydraulic System and its four integrated control systems to make the best use of the machine’s hydraulic power and momentum, resulting in added strength and fuel efficiency. “The power on the CX245D surprises us every day,” said Webb. “We are putting this machine in situations that we might need two machines on, but it’s able to pull large foundations out of the ground, it’s able to pull large tanks out of the ground.”

“The Case hydraulics and auxiliary hydraulics and the pumps are able to support the attachments that we have. And sometimes we have oversized attachments on these machines that come from our larger fleet and they’re able to perform and run those attachments, no issues at all.”

Outfitted for the Toughest Tasks

East Coast customizes each of its machines to meet the unique demands of demolition work. “That’s the fun part about demolition — we’re not just getting a dirt digging machine,” said Webb. “It starts out that way, but we add all kinds of goodies to [them]. We put rollover protection structures (ROPS) and falling object protective structures (FOPS) on them, we put heavy-duty belly guards on, we put cylinder guards on them, we put auxiliary hydraulics on them … we put in reversible fans to blow the radiators out throughout the day to get rid of the dust and the insulation that might buildup,” said Webb. “We’ve equipped these machines with the [coupler] that allows us to change attachments quickly and efficiently — the guys don’t have to get out of the cab,” he said. “We outfit them pretty much with everything you can possibly put on them with the extra cameras and the LED lighting package. We outfit everything we could put on that machine because we’re putting it in the worst application it could probably be in, and that’s just demolition in general.”

Lights, Camera, Action

Safety and visibility are critical on demolition and abatement sites, and East Coast Demolition crews workday and night. With this in mind, the company selected an LED light package that provides illumination that is more than three times brighter than halogen. The optional LED package includes six LED lights (two front, two rear and one on each side) and an extra sideview camera, in addition to the standard rearview camera and side camera.

The machine is also suited with a three-way camera setup, which provides 270 degrees of visibility around the machine. “The cameras are key,” he said. “We are always in tight situations, especially with the short tail machines to have the side camera and the rear camera. It allows us to make sure that before our guys go swinging around and loading out trucks at different angles and picking a pile and sorting the material, we’re able to check all of our clearances before we do that. As you can tell, we like to keep our machines nice and shiny and not having scratched-up counterweights and stuff, so it also keeps our guys a little bit more focused on what’s around them.”

Fuel Economy

The CX245D SR excavator meets emissions standards through a combination of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC) technologies, helping to maximize fuel efficiency, uptime and performance, without the need for diesel particulate filters (DPF) to replace, and no DPF regeneration. “These machines sip fuel compared to some of the same class machines, but at the same time, fuel efficiency is important to us because we’re running these machines nonstop,” said Webb. “We don’t have a lot of idle time. These machines are running at high rpms all day long. At no point do these machines run at a low idle for an 8- to 10- or 12-hour period. Having that fuel efficiency is important because over the annual usage the cost-savings are immense.”

Branding Power

One of the many ways that East Coast Demolition sets itself apart is through its branding. Each piece of equipment on its jobsites is kept as clean as possible, with the company logo emblazoned for maximum visibility. “[My dad] always said, ‘You want people to know who’s doing the job,’ and we’ve just carried that through. Branding is highly important to me. Any company that has a strong position in the current market pays attention to branding. And I want people to be able to look at my jobsite and be able to say that East Coast Demolition did that job. They can see the difference between my jobsite and a competitor’s jobsite not only because of my equipment that’s logoed, but because the pride that we take in our equipment and the jobsite and how clean it looks.”