Promises. Warranties. Guarantees. Everyone has been burned by a company when some negating small print is noticed after the fact. Mason Private Locating of Pittsboro, Indiana, works hard to not be that type of company. It tries to be explicit in expressing what it means when it says it performs “precise locates.” Mason Private Locating even offers a “guarantee locate” option.

When the task is finding a completely buried utility line, precise location becomes relative and is regulated differently from state to state. The standard “tolerance zone” — an area that is officially acceptable as a locate — is typically 18 to 24 inches from dead center of a line, plus the diameter of the line itself. So the seeker of a buried piece of infrastructure has a few feet to play with to register a “precise” locate. But Mason Private Locating aims for more accuracy than that.

“We don’t want to just be in the tolerance zone,” says owner Jake Mason. “Different factors come into play, but we make sure we do everything in our power to get the most accurate read of where a utility is. We want to be as close as we absolutely can be.”

In spite of challenging factors on any given job, Mason Private Locating does offer customers a “guarantee locate” option, which is spelled out on the company website. While the option is more expensive, it offers a client additional coverage in case an issue develops.

“If we are able to utilize all the tools we need in a search, our guaranteed service will cover the cost of any utility damages that result from us having missed something,” Mason says. “Some companies will say when that happens, ‘Well, tough luck. We tried.’ That’s not good enough for us.”

Read more about Mason Private Locating in the August 2022 issue of Cleaner magazine.