KC Bobcat 50th Anniversary

Why Patriot Excavation Sees KC Bobcat as an Excellent Trade Partner

Patriot is more than just a name for Patriot Excavation owner John Meyer. 

“I was a fireman at a large metropolitan area of Kansas City metro for about eighteen years,” John said. “There, we only worked every third day, 24 hours at a time. I had a skid steer of my own that I bought when I was younger, and I sold some jobs here and there on my days off, making a little extra money for my family. Over time, I picked up more jobs, to the point that I had a hard time keeping up with all that work just on my days off. I had three young kids at home, and I hit a point where I had the choice either to turn down some work and stay at the fire department or retire early and go after a little more business. That gave me the opportunity to spend a little more time with my wife and kids and not be gone at the fire station on nights, weekends, and holidays.” 

Overall, John has been in the excavation business for twenty years, owning and operating Patriot Excavation for the past four years. “I spend a good majority of my time estimating on bids, meeting at job sites, meeting with customers, looking at what their needs are, and figuring out not only what that’s going to cost but how to make their needs fit the current job site. I don’t do a whole lot of operating myself anymore. Most of my time is spent trying to keep work in front of us and keep customers happy.” 

Patriot Excavation crews work in both residential and commercial construction. Recently, some of their biggest jobs have centered around new neighborhood projects.  

“Kansas City has a pretty big demand on housing right now. There’s a huge housing shortage, so we work with a lot of developers and track home builders to build entire neighborhoods. They’ll develop it, and then we’ll go in,” John said. 

He went on to explain that his residential neighborhood crews are split into two categories. “We have the dirt work side of things, where we dig basements, backfill, grade the yards and get them ready for grass. And we have excavation crews, where an operator and a laborer pair together to dig for water, sewer, and electrical lines, burying those and making all those connections. It takes multiple crews, but those crews are operating in different facets of the neighborhood.” 

With seven compact track loaders, five mini excavators, and a MT120 mini track loader, it’s no surprise that Patriot Excavation relies heavily on the quality of their Bobcat equipment. 

“We’ve had a lot of success with the reliability of Bobcat equipment,” John said. “The machines run well, and they run smooth. All of our Bobcat equipment has enclosed cabins, heated and cooled, and our guys especially like that. But the reliability, the power, the maneuverability of the machines…as far as the operators go, that’s what they like the most. As far as I go from a business ownership standpoint, the thing that I like most about KC Bobcat is the service that they provide.” 

John did his research before ending up with KC Bobcat. In the end, he stuck with Bobcat because of the consistency of the Field Service, Rental, and Sales departments. 

“We tried other manufacturers and machines here and there just to compare and see how the machines hold up, but service especially is huge for us. Having those guys jump in right away and be there anytime we need them to get our machines up and running…that was a huge deciding factor. Obviously, we like the quality and the reliability of the machine. But their ability to service us compared to what we experienced with several other manufacturers in the area over the years isn’t even close. They do everything they can to make sure that we don’t have too much downtime and that we’re not losing money with machines not operating.” 

That consistency of service was recently on display when our Blue Springs branch manager Tim Droege helped him in a crisis.

“When our MT100 recently got stolen, I let KC Bobcat know because obviously we’d have to replace it,” John said. “Tim immediately called us and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got these options in stock. Just tell us where you need it. We’ll get it there.’ Within about twelve hours of finding out that our machine got stolen, we had a replacement up and running so that our operators could keep going and keep customers happy with their timelines.”

Because of the consistent service from people like Tim Droege, KC Bobcat has become an integral part of Patriot Excavation’s team.

“In my industry, we work with a lot of builders and general contractors, and they refer to all their subs as trade partners,” John said. “As a company, we at Patriot try to be the best trade partner we can be to those builders, not only looking at what’s in front of us but also at the whole picture, at what maximizes that builder’s ability to be successful, and at how we can point out things that could be done differently before or after we do our job. KC Bobcat has been an excellent trade partner to us in that same fashion.”

We’ve been backing businesses like Patriot Excavation for 50 years, and we’re just getting started. Here’s to the next 50 and the stories still to come!