This is the 35th anniversary for Eric Palmer Trucking & Excavating. If the work can be done with
a backhoe, dump trucks and a bulldozer, Palmer does it.
The company’s jobs include water lines, sewer lines, digging basements, putting driveways in, grading
around houses, hauling dirt and stone.
“I started with one truck and then another truck, depending on the needs of people around town,” Palmer
said.
The company has up to 10 employees, depending on the season. He has 15 trucks and with the other the
equipment, backhoes and bulldozers. Palmer said that he could employ up to 20, but finds it hard to find
that many qualified people.
The business does mostly residential work, with some commercial work. Palmer’s trucks can be seen hauling
asphalt or stone for some of the big commercial projects, like work on Interstate 75, but his wouldn’t
be the company doing the actual construction.
“We’re pretty much all over Wood County. If I can stay busy in town, why should I travel?” Palmer said.
“We’re year round. We do a lot of salt hauling out of the mines under Detroit.”
Palmer knows that the work is more than just how to operate the machinery. There’s a lot of knowledge
needed, which he believes is solely experience based.
He does get into what some might call consulting, but he calls “answering questions.”
“I’ve seen a lot of it over the years. There are new problems all the time,” Palmer said. “In my
specialty work, people have to think. If you’re putting something together and in the midst of that
something changes, you have to adapt.”
He clearly remembers his first truck, a 1975 Ford Louisville Tandem Axle dump truck in yellow and green.
There have been a lot of changes in the industry.
“Machinery has adapted to people. There’s less fatigue and less work. They still have to think,” Palmer
said. “All my equipment now is sitting in a seat and using your hands.”
Today, much of the machinery operates with joy sticks, like a video game and Palmer thinks that works
well for kids who grew up with the games. But he is well aware that operating heavy machinery is no
game. There is a lot of safety and building knowledge involved in digging a foundation, basement or
getting the grade right for water to flow properly.
Palmer is out on the job sites every day with his workers. He still trains employees and will pick up a
shovel if hand work needs to be done.
“I do want to mention my wife Jackie. She works in the office, taking all the calls. She’s been with me
since the beginning. She does all the office work: phone calls, scheduling, deliveries and bookkeeping,”
Palmer said.
Palmer is a 1979 Bowling Green High School graduate, who did construction work with his father. After his
father’s passing, he formed his own company in 1985. The company office location is only half a mile
from the house he grew up in, off of U.S. 6.
“I like being outside. I grew up in the country,” Palmer said. “I like that things are different every
day.”
Palmer also believes in community service. Recently, he has been setting up his trucks to block the city
roads for the Firefly Nights events in Bowling Green. While the big dump trucks have his logo on the
side, making the vehicles do double-duty as a billboard, he knows that it’s also a safety issue for the
public.
