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Nicholas White grew up around excavation.

His father has been in the dirt business his entire life.

He waited until he was almost 40 to join him — and it took a vaccine mandate to finally make it happen.

Most guys in excavation started young. Nicholas took the long way around — machinist, CDL trucker, Coca-Cola driver, nuclear journeyman machinist at a US Navy shipyard, engineering technician. Then COVID hit, the shipyard issued the mandate, and the decision he'd been putting off for 25 years got made for him.

He bought a John Deere 200D, called his dad, and they built WPM Excavation in southern Maine from the ground up.

TAKEAWAYS:

✅ The Career Nobody Expected — Nuclear journeyman machinist. Engineering technician. COVID mandate. That's what it took to finally get Nicholas into the excavator full time.

✅ Working With Your Father — His dad is 70, still putting in 10-12 hour days, and owns four of the six excavators. The dynamic took years to get right.

✅ The Job He Should've Walked Away From — He tried to make bad materials work on a pond job. Customer was unhappy. Here's what he learned and what he does differently now.

✅ "I Trained My Competition" — The 17-year-old he hired, developed, and eventually lost to the GC across the street.

✅ Low Overhead as a Moat — In a saturated local market, keeping costs lean is the strategy that lets you outlast the guys who overborrowed.

LINKS:

Try TULBOXX Free — First 5 estimates free, no credit card: www.tulboxx.com

➡️ Follow Nicholas — WPM Excavation: www.wpmexcavation.com

➡️ Shop Attachments — Skid Steer Nation: https://skidsteernation.com/

➡️ Contractor Marketing — Throttled Up: https://www.getthrottledup.com