The year was 1963. The LA Dodgers won the World Series, a first-class postage stamp cost a nickel and Lawrence of Arabia won for best picture.
It was also the year Tony Fucinaro established his business – Fucinaro Excavating. Run as a one-man operation until his brother Don joined the business in 1970, they soon grew the company from residential work to excavating and grading for city street projects.
In the early 1980’s, with the addition of Tony’s son, Dave, and Don’s sons, Mike and Ron – they began taking on larger excavating projects in addition to larger city street and state road projects. Tony Fucinaro passed away in 2003 and today the daily operations are man-aged by Dave and Ron. At the age of 79, Don Fucinaro still works every day for the family-owned business he helped to establish.
Depending on the season, their staff of 50 works mainly in the Omaha and Council Bluffs areas. Many have been with Fucinaro for years including: Don Brewer (30 years), Chuck Shanahan (20 years), Wayne Bojanski (26 years), Don Williams (26 years), Steve Tallant (24 years) and Bob Eckermann (20 years).
Since the beginning the business has counted on CAT equipment including loaders, excavators, compactors, road graders and truck engines. Dave Fucinaro said, “It’s lived up to our expectations. We have a lot of hours on our equipment – some with up to or over 20,000 hours.”
Besides reliable equipment, Ron Fucinaro feels the service department and parts department keep them coming back to NMC. “This is one of the reasons we keep buying equipment from NMC. The service guys take good care of us. You can call the parts guys and give them a serial number and they can figure out what we need. If it’s not on the shelf they get it ordered and it’ll be here the next day,” said Ron Fucinaro. Also helping the excavating company with their equipment needs is NMC heavy equipment sales representative Ivan Rogers and product support sales representative Doug Wellman.
Getting it Done Right. The First Time.
In 2004 Fucinaro Excavating learned that NMC was a Trimble® dealer. “When we found out there was a way to control machine precision we were interested right away. We didn’t want to make the jump until we knew it worked well,” said Dave. After testing the technology side-by-side with a competitive brand, it wasn’t long before they decided to invest in machine control technology. Since then it has developed into an instrumental part of their equipment line-up.
“It allows us to eliminate a lot of surveying and it allows us to grade the projects to a tighter tolerance and do the grading a lot faster,” Dave said. According to Ron, “If you get the right data and the right model – you can do the job right the first time. It eliminates rework.”
When asked if Trimble technology was easy to operate, Dave said, “I could teach anyone to use it. A less experienced operator can do higher quality work with this tool.” Ron commented, “A lot of guys are pretty afraid of it at first – but once you get them in the seat and show them what it can do, it’s easy.”
Fucinaro Excavating has worked closely with the Technology Team at NMC – including Nathan Nelson, Ben Jans, Derek Drew and Troy Einspahr. “NMC’s package of software, hardware and training are pretty far ahead of the others,” Dave said. Setting up the models and having all the data prep done by the Technology Team is an available option – which was a big comfort to Fucinaro. “When we first started out, that’s what we did – we called Nate and they built the models for us,” Ron said.
“NMC’s package of software, hardware and training are pretty far ahead of the others.”
In addition to technology support, NMC keeps an inventory of technology parts on-hand and loaner equipment available. “One of our commitments we made to them – if they go down we have something on-hand to keep them up and running until we get theirs fixed,” Nathan Nelson of the NMC Technology Team said. According to Dave, “You’ve clearly made the commitment more than any other dealer. The fact that NMC has made such a commitment puts you ahead of the competition.”
Customer satisfaction is very important to Fucinaro Excavating. “I don’t think we’ve ever had an owner not 100 percent satisfied since 1963, and if they weren’t we made it right,” Dave said. Today, preci-sion technology and the service and support they receive from NMC helps them achieve continued customer satisfaction.
Published in The Connection Volume 2 Issue 2
