It’s easy to understand why Kerry Roslinski, the owner of Pipe-Eye Sewer Services in Bradford, Pennsylvania, is such a huge fan of Hi-Vac Aquatech trucks. In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that without them, he wouldn’t be in business.

When he founded Pipe-Eye in 2003, Roslinski didn’t have a nickel to his name, as he puts it. But he wrote a letter to Pat Snyder, the vice president of sales at Hi-Vac, who agreed to meet with him. The end result? Hi-Vac helped him get financing to buy an Aquatech vac truck.

“Equipped with that truck, I got a contract with the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT),” Roslinski explains. “And as I bought more vac trucks, that allowed Pipe-Eye to expand further by securing additional significant contracts with the state of New York to clean storm sewers along state highways. Looking back, that work really jump-started our business.”

Roslinski contacted Hi-Vac because he was trained to work on the manufacturer’s vac trucks in two previous jobs. Those experiences left him impressed with the machines’ capabilities. “One feature I really like is the rear-mounted hose reel, which allows our guys to see oncoming traffic,” he says. “And the boom is at the rear of the truck, so it doesn’t obscure their vision while driving.”

The longtime sewer cleaner also lauds the Aquatech trucks for their reliability, longevity and ease of maintenance, not to mention Hi-Vac’s great customer service.

“Sure, we have typical breakdowns,” Roslinski says. “But in general, they’re very reliable trucks. We’ve had contracts with the NYSDOT to clean several hundred miles of storm sewers and all three trucks would run from May until the beginning of October, nonstop daily. And that kind of work is a lot tougher on trucks than cleaning sanitary sewers because the debris is bigger — and there’s more of it.

“Often enough, we’d run into lines that were 90 percent plugged from one end of the sewer to the other, with rocks inside as big as 12 inches in diameter. But those Aquatechs can pull them right out.”

In another example of the Aquatech’s ability to power through tough jobs, Roslinski cites a project in the city of Bradford that involved cleaning a 36-inch-diameter sanitary sewer that ran almost a mile under a large creek, with a refinery on both sides. The waterway was about 65 feet wide.

“It was a main interceptor line that had never been cleaned,” he explains. “We had to put the truck in the creek and build boxes around the manholes to keep the water away (there was no creek there when the line was first installed). We removed massive amounts of debris – probably 25 truckloads worth. It took several weeks to do this, and the vacuum was running nonstop, eight hours a day. But that truck got the job done.”

To learn more about Pipe-Eye Sewer Services, read "Cleaning Contractor Targets Municipal Work" in the March 2016 issue of Cleaner.