For years, construction industry veteran Steve McLarty faced the same issue as many of his counterparts — handling earth materials. Obtaining and/or getting rid of dirt poses a challenge on just about every project. From contractors, to developers, to builders and municipalities — everyone deals with the issue of how to get what you need and how to get rid of what you don’t.
“There’s usually a lot of scrambling that goes on — phone calls, faxes and so on — to see if anyone can use what you’re getting rid of or if anyone has what you need,” McLarty said. “I just kept thinking that with all this technology we have, there has to be a better way to do this, something that would be easy and cost-effective, and that people could use when it was convenient for them.”
Enter DirtFinder.com, launched this year by McLarty.
Based in Middlefield, DirtFinder is a matching service for those who have earth materials and those who need them. The service deals in common fill, sand, screened topsoil, millings, clay, septic fill, gravel, stone and wood chips.
The process is quite simple. Users first visit DirtFinder.com and search the listings by entering the criteria of what they are looking for, i.e., material type, quantity and location. If there’s a match, the listings appear automatically. There is no charge to browse the listings and there are no membership requirements.
If no match exists, users can then register and pay to create a listing. The cost for one listing is $38 with quantity discounts for more listings. As soon as a match is made, DirtFinder immediately notifies the user.
Changing industry perception could be DirtFinder’s biggest obstacle initially.
“One of our major challenges will be changing the mindset as to how people in the industry approach handling earth materials,” McLarty said. “For decades, the process hasn’t changed very much. DirtFinder.com is bringing it in to the 21st century. We believe that this will revolutionize the industry and once people get into the habit, it will be second nature, just like any new technology.”
McLarty, whose goal is to take the company nationwide, said his top priorities for the next year include getting the word out about DirtFinder, continuing to develop the service in response to feedback received from users, and ultimately, to hear satisfied customers telling success stories about how Dirtfinder.com saved them time and money.
To that end, DirtFinder even has its own blog designed to build relationships with customers.
“We felt the blog was a way to connect with people and offer something value-added — even if someone’s not in the construction industry, or if they are, but don’t deal directly with earth materials,” McLarty said. “So we try to offer a blend of subjects — some deal directly with dirt-related topics; others are more geared to overall business topics, such as delegation or communication.”
“We’re all in this together. It’s a small way of giving something to the business community, whether or not they’re customers.”
John Lahtinen is a freelance writer based in Farmington. Reach him at lahts@yahoo.com.
