Field Journal: Setting the Tone Early
Spring isn’t just the start of the busy season—it’s the start of your team’s rhythm for the year. The habits built now often carry through the months ahead.
Field Journal: Soft Ground, Smart Decisions
Spring brings opportunity—but it also brings mud, moisture and unpredictable ground. You’ve seen it a hundred times. Frost leaves, rain settles in and the ground doesn’t cooperate. The young crews might want to push through it. This is where you step in.
Water Scarcity: Is It Closer Than We Think?
In the 1930s, no one saw the Dust Bowl coming. But when an extended drought scenario descended on the Great Plains after years of wheat farming had steadily replaced the region’s moisture-retaining prairie grasses, well… suddenly, the problem was real. That was a long time ago, and science has become far more sophisticated. Yet, that’s precisely why water insecurity is on everyone’s radar.
Beyond the Rubber Ring
For many years, watertight joints in corrugated HDPE pipe relied on a simple idea: compress a solid rubber gasket between the spigot and the bell. It worked and became standard practice across the industry. But as jobsite demands increased and performance standards became stricter, gasket design had to improve.
SpringSeal
You don’t see it. You don’t brag about it. But if it’s missing—or not doing its job—you’ll know fast. Let’s be honest: nobody wakes up excited to talk about gaskets. Well, except maybe for Mark Knapp. When a drainage job goes right, the pipe gets the credit. When a job goes wrong, the pipe still gets blamed. And somewhere in the middle—quiet, unnoticed and absolutely critical—is the gasket. It’s the small component doing the big work: keeping water where it belongs, holding the joint together and helping systems perform for years after the heavy equipment has left the field.
Built for Dry Ground
In the Midwest, contractors fight against water. In Utah, they fight for it. Shawn Peterson is the owner and founder of Great Basin Pipe & Irrigation, a company built around the reality of life in the West.
Meet Noah Johnston
When Fratco made the decision to expand into the Southeast, the company needed someone willing to take a leap of faith. For Noah Johnston, that leap meant leaving his Indiana hometown of Monticello and heading to Alabama to help establish Fratco’s presence in an entirely new market.
Blueprint for Success: Built to Grow
There’s something about spring that feels like a fresh start. The ground softens. The days get longer. The air shifts. It’s a season that reminds us that growth doesn’t happen by accident, but begins with action.