When Dustin Stansbury decided to acquire a hydrovac truck for his Harper, Kansas, company, DLS Underground, he settled on a product manufactured in Lacombe, Alberta, Canada. SmartVac is the brand and Stansbury became so enamored of the truck that he has been instrumental in the opening of a SmartVac manufacturing facility in Harper.
It came about this way: When his purchased truck was delivered from Canada, it was accompanied by the company founder, Theresa Stec. SmartVac is the third startup company for Stec. Her small company’s product is notably lighter and more compact than hydroexcavation rigs of comparable power. It has particular appeal to project owners in urban areas, such as Wichita and Oklahoma City, which Stansbury has targeted in his business plan.
The rest of the story is that Stansbury and some partners had previously bought a 50-year-old manufacturing business in Harper that was closing after a good run. It primarily produced — and continues to produce — big and heavy disks used in large-scale ag operations and in some construction settings. Its biggest implement is a double-wing disk that produces a 60-foot working swath across a field being prepared for planting. Formerly called the Green Line, the partnership now produces the “Big G” disk under the name of New Trend Manufacturing.
When Stec learned of Stansbury’s newly acquired manufacturing company, she suggested he help produce the SmartVac trucks.
He jumped at the offer, and the first American version of the SmartVac was put together about a year ago. “It is a very good truck. It is a very simple truck. It ought to be called DumbVac because it’s so simple to operate,” Stansbury says.
To summarize: Stansbury and his wife have a fast-growing HDD and hydrovac company, are partners in a venerable ag implement manufacturing company, and now have the sole manufacturing facility on American soil of a Canadian hydrovac truck, SmartVac.
It is a diversified set of companies that sprang from one man’s desire to own a directional drilling company of his own and run a few lines under the ground. “This journey has not been easy. Nothing about success is easy. It has been hard. But the first step was the hardest and the scariest,” Stansbury says.
Read more about DLS Underground in the November 2026 issue of Cleaner magazine.
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