Approximately 200 guests from all parts east of the Mississippi River, including areas in Canada, made their way to Ditch Witch of Georgia in Forest Park, Ga., for two days of rock drilling instruction of the Ditch Witch "We Rock" rock drilling training event on June 25 and 26.

"There are 17 Ditch Witch dealers represented at this event including about 150 customers and over 40 different dealer personnel," said Greg Wolfe, Ditch Witch eastern U.S. sales manager. "We held the event over a two-day period with the first day being a training event for the Ditch Witch dealer organization on these products."

The Ditch Witch products that were tested in a "real world" environment included four drills, a soft excavation unit, mud reclaimer, mud mixer, tracking electronics and downhole tools. Ditch Witch Financial Services was available to finance any of the products. The reclaimer is a new product demoed at the event, and provides the ability to reuse material and water without continually hauling more in.

"The soft excavation FXT50 unit being used on the demo site, which is a truck-mounted vacuum excavation product, complements the entire Ditch Witch directional drilling line-up that we have," said Wolfe. "We offer everything from about a 30 horsepower up to roughly a 74 horsepower soft excavation unit."

Wolfe talked about a future product offering from Ditch Witch.

"The reclaimer being demoed on this site is a test unit that will probably go into production in January. We’ve had it out with customers and it is gaining great acceptance. It’s a 90 gallon per minute system, with four filters and 450 gallon capacity to dispose of fluid as well as reclaim and reuse fluid."

"It’s nice to see these machines set up side-by-side working together and to see the different applications and the different tooling on each of the various sized machines," said Ditch Witch customer Jim O’Connor of OTS, Jackson, N.J. "From a 100,000 lbs. rig down to a 30,000 lbs. rig, the AT [all terrain] versus the non-AT machines with the air hammer set-ups. They have the new mud reclaiming system here, the system that isn’t in production yet, but they’re letting us see it now. It’s kind of exciting to see how it could be very beneficial to us [once available]. This was a good event, well planned and we’re happy to be here."

An important aspect of the Ditch Witch product line, which was stressed during the event, was the company doesn’t "just build drills." Ditch Witch manufactures its own drill pipe, downhole tooling, electronics, mud mixing and soft excavation products.

Wolfe was pleased with the event and the location selected.

"This show is the first of its kind outside of our corporate location in quite a long time. At this location, we have the ability to demonstrate our products in a real environment and a real job site type application. We’re drilling into granite structures here that are underground versus above ground. At this particular site, we’re hitting rock below only inches of dirt on this site."

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