We love to play in the dirt!

Excavating buildings may seem like unhindered destruction, but in reality a large degree of preparation and precaution goes into taking out every brick. The old Bloomsburg University Bookstore demolition job was given to Schlegel Excavating, a local excavating company from Millmont, Pennsylvania. The former bookstore is being leveled to pave way for a new seven story multipurpose building and dormitory. The demolition site is made off limits and safety checks are in place for a cautious destruction, and as the old alliteration goes, proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.
                                                                          Figure 1

                                        

Residents who walk to to class now hear the familiar sounds of any construction site; the dump truck reverse siren and steel beams being crunched by the hydraulic thumb. While Hollywood might make demolition look like TNT and huge dust clouds, this site is far from it. Yellow chunks of insulation  pepper the red brick and grey cinder blocks all layered in dust paint a much less explosive picture. Graffiti across the structure reads "Moved to KUB" informs about the relocation to the post haste store now in Kehr Union Ballroom. Among the wreckage lay a convoy of heavy machinery, including dump trucks, a skidsteer (Figure 2) and three specialized excavators: one with a thumb, one with a hydraulic thump (Figure 1) and another with a hammer.

                   Figure 2

The owner and president of the company is a Pennsylvania native named Chip Schlegel. Chip has the rough, callused hands and hardened face of any blue-collar laborer in America. His white construction hardhat bears his company’s name proudly, reading Schlegel Excavating. The outfit he bears seems to be the one all his workers adhere to also, classic blue jeans and steel toe boots accompanying the neon hoodies that make everyone stand out like a traffic cone. President Schlegel started his company using the knowledge of heavy machinery he learned as a teen growing up, "20 years. Started this business in 1995 on my own and built my house up. And refinanced my house about three times so far. It's a tough business." he said with a reflective tone. This experience goes to show in how he preps every work site he does.                                                                                                                       Figure 3

The demolition business has taught Chip some valuable lessons about safety and taking things incrementally. With an introspective tone, Chip said "A lot of patience. You can't go hogwild and take large pieces, because that's when things go wrong. You gotta nibble at and figure out how things are put together so you don't pull a wall down on yourself. And then, safety like that tree with the yellow ribbons on (figure 4), that is our safety tree and if something is happening we meet there because sometimes you don't know where you truck is. Our fire extinguisher is over there too." as he pointed towards an elderly oak tree with caution tape around the diameter, the loose end blowing the hilly Bloomsburg wind. 

                       Figure 4

Chip puts in hard work on every project they do, but with the recent financial turmoil in the U.S. the economy hasn’t always been the friendliest to him. Working on a college campus and looking back on his business endeavors, "I wish I went to college, its hard work". That’s a phrase many of America’s blue collar workforce has said once or twice in their lifetimes, and should serve a reminder to college students about the excellent opportunities we have in higher education that so many others unfortunately do not. Chip continued talking about his business history, "Back in 2005, I went bankrupt and we did the Central Columbia Middle School and I lost 100,000 on that job. So I had to refinance and regroup and we have been struggling since then." glaring into the ruins of the old bookstore reminded of past struggles. Chip went on to say 'It's a pretty big job, we had a good one last year at Harrisburg airport. We try to stay local" and that this job needed to be finished by March in order to make this year stay on time.

                                                                                                                     Figure 5


All around the perimeter of the work site are collection of different types of fences, from orange plastic to metal and wire fences. The patchwork nerveless does the job it was meant for, with the only two entrances to work site by the bottom of Ben Franklin and across from Lycoming. The heavy machinery look like they came out of the backyard sandbox, printed on the back "We like to play in the dirt" (Figure 5), the motto of Schlegel Excavating. The motto hold true, with mud, dirt and debris under every fingernail and splattered on every vehicle. The large CAT315C excavator rolls over everything from steel to brick to insulation, with treads reminiscent of a tank museum. The destroyer's outfit is made up of a classic John Deer sweatshirt, blues jeans and sunglasses. The thumb attachment on his machine makes grabbing scrap like as a claw game in a diner.

Mr. Schlegel’s proper preparation makes the demolition site safe and secured for both his crew and the students and staff here at Bloomsburg. However, sometimes jobs call for critical thinking to help get around obstacles. One unique job that Chip took on turned him into inventor - "We did one out in Lewistown that was right next to a glass ceiling, When I went to ground zero, I saw how they used tarps for the rubble. So I invented this tarp system with poles so that nothing would pop and break the glass. It was only six inches away from the building we were demolishing, so I though that was one of my toughest". That’s the kind of forward thinking that goes into every demolition job he takes. Brick by brick and day by day, Chip is a testament that proves that proper preparation prevents piss poor performance!