History Of Voss Trenching

Our company was started by our Dad back in 1954. Dad came to live in the town of Richfield with his Mom and his brother in 1929. His Mom bought a forty acre parcel with home and buildings to run as a dairy farm which we still have today to run our business.  Dad worked the farm with family until WW II and went to Germany. After the war he came back to work at the farm and other side jobs, including nursery work and trucking.  He wanted to get away from the farm and started trucking oil. Later he started trucking sand to lake front properties to create beaches.

As time went on he started digging and moving ground with a tractor / front end loader. This led to his first back-hoe purchase on the back of a 1949 Ford dual wheeled truck.  The back-hoe was called a HOPTO (hydraulically operated power take off).  It was quite an old design machine, but got a lot of trenching and septic systems dug. Dad stayed the course and later in 1966 bought another back-hoe, a Hy-Hoe and put it on the back of an International truck.

During the late 60’s and early 70’s my brother and I were in High School and we started helping Dad work the business. As time went on my brother also helped on the mechanical end of the business and I with the paperwork and design part of the business.

We still all worked the jobs together. After high school I started college at UWM, but got drafted in the summer of 1972 and went to Germany. My brother worked with Dad and in winter worked a part time factory job.

When I came home in 1974 I started working with Dad and my brother through the summer and fall. I decided to go to Tech school for winter semester in accounting, but later stayed with our septic plumbing business.  We all worked together through tough times and good. In 1978 we bought our first track back-hoe and made it through some lean years. It was good working with Dad for a long time and his example of how to treat people with fairness and honesty. He was a soft spoken man and his work and reputation brought him a lot of work.

My brother and I took over the company in 1989 and continue to try to live up to Dad’s way of always doing the job as if you were installing it for our own house. Our Dad is gone now since 1998 and my brother and I still live on the farm that he came to love and work since 1929. We’re still trying to do our best on each job as our Dad did and we know you will be pleased with the job we do for you.

Thank you for your interest in our company,

Darryl Voss