Podcast Episode 149

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First-gen contractors: two paths into drainage

First-gen contractors: two paths into drainage

Episode 149 | 20:57 min

With Guests:

Nate Ludvigson, Ludvigson Tiling
Dustin Nelson, 605 Tile & Drain
Karl Guetter, Prinsco Agricultural Segment Lead

Most drainage contractors grow up in the business. Nate Ludvigson and Dustin Nelson didn’t. With a borrowed plow and a cousin’s backhoe, Nate started Ludvigson Tiling near Madison, Minnesota almost 20 years ago. Dustin launched 605 Tile & Drain in 2021 near Summit, South Dakota, jumping in with both feet after years of farming and seeing the difference tiling made on his own farm.

Host Jamie Duininck and Prinsco’s Karl Guetter sit down with Nate and Dustin to have a tailgate talk about the sacrifices of starting a business from nothing, balancing farming with contracting, the hardest jobs left in the industry, and what they hope the next 10 years look like. Near the end of the conversation, Dustin turns the tables by asking Jamie and Karl a question– wondering how AI might change the relationship between contractors and manufacturers.

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"I really enjoy farming, and I really enjoy drainage. I get a little bit of both worlds that I never thought I'd be doing, but it's worked out good."

— Nate Ludvigson, Ludvigson Tiling

Guest Bios

Nate Ludvigson

Nate Ludvigson owns Ludvigson Tiling, a land improvement and drainage contracting business he started near Madison, Minnesota, almost 20 years ago. He runs the company alongside his family farm, installing tile with two self-propelled Wolfe plows and GPS guided systems. In 2016, the Land Improvement Contractors of America named Ludvigson Tiling its Contractor of the Year.

Dustin Nelson

Dustin Nelson owns 605 Tile & Drain near Summit, South Dakota. A fifth-generation farmer, he first tiled his family’s home quarter in 2008 and started his own contracting business in 2021. He runs the operation himself, tiling in spring and fall, running mains in summer, and farming alongside it all.

Karl Guetter

Guest host Karl Guetter is Prinsco’s Agricultural Segment Lead and an active farmer in South Central Minnesota. He has nearly 20 years of experience in the ag industry and, being a farmer himself, is a true advocate for managing water on the farm.

Nate Ludvigson (00:00):

I came home to farm, is how it started and there wasn’t enough opportunity at our farm to support two families doing it.

Dustin Nelson (00:08):

I started off with the WOLF 250. It was a 1988, and it was built in a barn and it had every part on it from a scrap yard you could think of.

Nate Ludvigson (00:17):

There was sacrifices that you had to make to make it work, I guess.

Dustin Nelson (00:21):

Keep up with equipment and trying to have the latest, greatest stuff just to make sure that we do the most quality work as we can.

Jamie Duininck (00:30):

[00:00:30] Welcome to The Water Table Podcast. We kind of have a fun episode today. We’re calling this a tailgate talk out in the field on location. Have a couple of customers with me, and Karl Guetter, our agricultural segment lead. We just wanted to talk to Nate Ludvigson and Dustin Nelson here, two contractors. Nate’s over by Madison, Minnesota. Is that your address, Nate? Madison?

Nate Ludvigson (00:57):

Yep.

Jamie Duininck (00:58):

Madison, Minnesota. And [00:01:00] Dustin, you’re in South Dakota.

Dustin Nelson (01:02):

Yep.

Jamie Duininck (01:02):

What’s your address? What town?

Dustin Nelson (01:03):

Summit.

Jamie Duininck (01:04):

Summit, South Dakota, 605 Drainage and Ludvigson Drainage. So thanks, guys for joining us. And just want to have a conversation about what you guys do in the field and little bit about your lives, how you got started, those kind of things. So appreciate you being here today.

Dustin Nelson (01:21):

Yeah, appreciate you guys having us.

Nate Ludvigson (01:23):

Thank you.

Jamie Duininck (01:24):

Nate, I’ve known you for a while. You’ve been in business probably 2012, [00:01:30] that timeframe or is it before that even?

Nate Ludvigson (01:32):

I think this is probably close to our 20th year.

Jamie Duininck (01:35):

20th already.

Nate Ludvigson (01:36):

So I’m thinking it’s right when-

Jamie Duininck (01:37):

You started when you were 10?

Nate Ludvigson (01:38):

Yep, when I was 10 years old.

Jamie Duininck (01:40):

The 20th year already. And how’d you get started in the business?

Nate Ludvigson (01:45):

I came home to farm, is how it started and there wasn’t enough opportunity at our farm to support two families doing it. So I was always interested in drainage and I just had an opportunity where [00:02:00] a cousin and his brother-in-law, we bought a Wain’s pawl together and a backhoe and we started doing some of our own.

(02:09):

And before you knew it, we had calls from other people. And my other partners, they had enough going on, so we decided to split that up and I went on my own. And that’s how it started, I guess.

Jamie Duininck (02:20):

Yeah.

Karl Guetter (02:22):

What’d Charlie say when you told him what you were going to do?

Nate Ludvigson (02:24):

Are you sure? Are you sure? Yeah.

Karl Guetter (02:27):

Are you sure? Are you sure now?

Nate Ludvigson (02:30):

[00:02:30] Yeah. No, it’s worked out good. I guess, I really enjoy farming and I really enjoy drainage. So I mean, I get a little bit of both worlds that I never thought I’d be doing it, but it worked out good.

Jamie Duininck (02:45):

And what does crew look like for you? Do you run two machines all the time or part of the time?

Nate Ludvigson (02:52):

Part of the time, we’ll run two. When we’re in doing more seepage, we’ll run both [00:03:00] pawls. Now during the summer, we’re kind of leapfrogging them, doing mains through crop. We have eight guys now, I believe and then I hire surveying out.

(03:10):

So it seems like it’s been working for us this way, I guess. I don’t know. Everybody’s got a different philosophy on how it should run and work. So that’s the way we’re doing it.

Jamie Duininck (03:23):

Good. Dustin, you’re more of a newbie to the industry.

Dustin Nelson (03:27):

I am.

Jamie Duininck (03:28):

2021, [00:03:30] started your business. How did that come about? Why did you decide to join this industry?

Dustin Nelson (03:35):

So I’m a fifth generational farmer. And in 2008, we tiled our home quarter and just seen how much of a difference it really made and how good it was for the ground. And 2021, we wanted to kind of make another jump forward and we always talked about, we always wanted to own our own land, and the first thing we’d want to do anytime we have our own land is make sure [00:04:00] we get good drainage in it and tile it.

(04:02):

So then we kind of just got in, did more research on it and kind of jumped in both feet first. It was crazy.

Jamie Duininck (04:12):

Yeah, yeah. What’s the biggest surprise in those five years?

Dustin Nelson (04:18):

Oh man, how much money it really takes to support that business. I mean, it’s so much with trying to keep up with equipment and trying to [00:04:30] have the latest, greatest stuff just to make sure that we do the most quality work as we can because we want to make sure that we’re leaving our customers with the best product they could ever have.

Karl Guetter (04:41):

What machine did you start with?

Dustin Nelson (04:42):

I started off with the WOLF 250. It was a 1988 and it was built in a barn and it had every part on it from a scrap yard you could think of. I was proud of it though. It had a new paint job on it and then my God, I thought I had the world by the ass. It was a machine.

(05:00):

[00:05:00] So through there we made different updates and we’re getting a lot more efficient and just trying to be the most efficient way possible as we can.

Karl Guetter (05:10):

Did any family help you?

Dustin Nelson (05:12):

Nope.

Karl Guetter (05:12):

Just you and-

Dustin Nelson (05:13):

Just me.

Karl Guetter (05:14):

… hired man?

Dustin Nelson (05:15):

Yep. So I was farming with the family farm at that time. And I would mainly farm, and then in the spring and fall I would tile on the side. And in the summer we would do our mains and stuff, and we just [00:05:30] got into it and busier and busier and just loved it. So kind of how we started.

Jamie Duininck (05:38):

Nate, you were … And I’m not really asking your age, but I kind of am asking your age. You were pretty young when you started this business.

Nate Ludvigson (05:45):

I was.

Jamie Duininck (05:45):

Yeah.

Nate Ludvigson (05:46):

I’m 45.

Jamie Duininck (05:47):

Yeah. So, 25 years old and there isn’t too many people that I know in our industry that would start in the business without it being kind of a family legacy, and start working with [00:06:00] their dad or their uncle or something. You just kind of started on your own. Did have some partners in the beginning, but you still started on your own.

(06:07):

What were some of those early challenges, struggles that you maybe didn’t expect that now are in the distant past?

Nate Ludvigson (06:17):

I know there was some conversations with the banker that, “This better start working here or else we better think about something else.” And you kind of know how that conversation goes at home. So [00:06:30] there was sacrifices that you had to make to make it work, I guess. But yeah, it’s tough to get started on your own in this industry, but I don’t know.

(06:44):

A lot of contractors don’t communicate with each other, it seems like. It’s not like farming where you can ask, “Hey, what corn did you plant here or there?” But you kind of figure out along the way, right from wrong, I guess. I don’t know. Yeah, [00:07:00] I don’t know what else to say about that.

Jamie Duininck (07:00):

Yeah, yeah. No, no. And you do work with your wife, right? Was that from the beginning or did she start later on?

Nate Ludvigson (07:07):

She was working as a school teacher then, but she still would help. I still farm this whole time when I was doing this. My dad took care of a lot of the farm stuff. He took care of all the farm stuff and when I had time after work, I would help him. So I mean, I’d say he’s a pretty big support to what happened.

(07:29):

And some [00:07:30] of the guys that I’ve hired throughout the years, some of them have been there since I’ve started. So we’ve had some really good help, and local help, and I’ve been really fortunate for that, that they treat it as it’s their own too, I think, in a way-

Jamie Duininck (07:45):

Yeah, absolutely.

Nate Ludvigson (07:46):

… when you got people like that surrounding it.

Karl Guetter (07:48):

Your farm and your business have both come up together and they’ve both grown very nicely since I’ve known you. And just curious what the different things are between the two or the things that are the same that’s helped them both grow along the way. [00:08:00] And I mean, I don’t want to say everything you touch turns to gold. I mean, that may be the case, but I mean, that’s a pretty tall task to growing both like you have.

Nate Ludvigson (08:09):

We looked at it as we didn’t want to take … If we’re going to keep farming and doing what we’re doing, tiling, we didn’t want one to get not taken care of. So we wanted to grow both of them along the way. And I think we’ve started to use our group that tiles a little bit more on the farm [00:08:30] too, if we get behind on one end or the other of it.

(08:33):

So we’ve tried to bring them together more and to make it work a little better, I guess. I don’t know.

Karl Guetter (08:41):

I will say, your crew has always been supportive of your farming operation as well, which isn’t always the case, right? A lot of times if a guy’s got a second gig or whatever, the crew’s like, “I want nothing to do with that.” But I’ve known your guys, most of them for a long time and they’re super dudes.

Nate Ludvigson (08:58):

Yeah, they’re a good [00:09:00] group. They look out for each other, and the farm and whoever’s out there. I mean, it’s a good group. Our surveyor too has been a big part of it. Tony is his name, Abrahamson and you know him. I mean, we all know him, but he’s been a big part of it growing as well. The whole group together, I think has helped just-

Karl Guetter (09:28):

And now his son’s in the biz, right?

Nate Ludvigson (09:30):

[00:09:30] Yep, Max.

Karl Guetter (09:31):

So Max, so that’s going to continue on.

Nate Ludvigson (09:33):

Yes. Yep. They got a great business there. They do a really good job and they’re growing, too. They’re going to do some drone spraying and Max is getting into that kind of stuff.

Jamie Duininck (09:42):

It’s awesome.

Nate Ludvigson (09:43):

Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (09:43):

It’s awesome. Dustin, looking back at the five years you’ve been in business, what’s something that you would maybe do different or that surprised you about … Well, you already said that the money and how much it costs, but what would you do different if you [00:10:00] had to do it again?

Dustin Nelson (10:01):

I guess if I could do it again, I probably wouldn’t change anything because the journey itself has been so crazy. I mean, there’s times that you want to just absolutely sell the business for a dollar or pay somebody to take it away from you. But at the end of the day, I truly love what I do. I mean, I’m a farmer at heart and I still get to do that and I still get to do drainage.

(10:20):

And just like Nate was saying, we have such a good team. We have some that prefer to farm, some that prefer to tile, but yet we’ll kind of go back and forth as who needs help and what. [00:10:30] And also, just work together on things. And I wouldn’t change a thing, I don’t think just because if I didn’t have those hard days, I wouldn’t appreciate the good ones. You know?

Jamie Duininck (10:44):

Yeah, yeah. And it’s really great and I try to share that on the podcast a lot. Just a lot of people don’t understand what it’s like to live in rural America. And when you get in the spring, the excitement of spring and excitement of when the crop starts coming [00:11:00] out of the ground and how fast it grows. Nate and I, before the podcast here a couple of minutes ago were just talking about how much the corn is stretching out now, and how a week from now it’ll look quite a bit different than it does today.

(11:14):

And then when you get to fall, that’s even more excitement because everybody in the rural communities are working together. And now you have a different seat at the table with that, both of you guys do from just being a farmer. You’re a farmer, but you can also see that from the contractor [00:11:30] standpoint and how all the farmers, and whether Karl’s talked about that before, but whether you’re 80 years old or you’re a young kid going to school, you all have a part of getting that crop in, in the fall. And it’s just different and it’s really neat.

Dustin Nelson (11:46):

Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (11:46):

People don’t understand.

Dustin Nelson (11:49):

Absolutely.

Karl Guetter (11:50):

Let’s jump forward a little bit. So we’ve been talking about the past, but this winter at trade shows, as we’ve been visiting with some folks, one thing that I’ve been hearing a [00:12:00] little more is that the jobs that guys are getting into right now are the hard ones because the easy ones are done.

(12:08):

What does that look like from your seat? Is there some truth to that in your neck of the woods?

Nate Ludvigson (12:13):

Yes. Yeah, yeah. No, there’s challenges out there. That’s pretty true to what you said though, but we see a lot of it now getting replaced, some of the old stuff that was put in. But out our way, we really [00:12:30] have to get creative with our outlets. We don’t have that. And I think that’s some of the hard jobs that you’re hearing about.

Karl Guetter (12:37):

Pumping.

Nate Ludvigson (12:39):

Pumping and burning and ditching and just improving.

Jamie Duininck (12:43):

Just finding a place for that water.

Nate Ludvigson (12:45):

Finding a place. Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (12:47):

Yeah. How about, do you guys work in high water table stuff often or …

Nate Ludvigson (12:53):

We are today.

Jamie Duininck (12:54):

Yeah.

Nate Ludvigson (12:54):

Yeah, yeah. High water table sand is, I think, that’s [00:13:00] where we get challenged.

Jamie Duininck (13:01):

The most.

Nate Ludvigson (13:02):

Yeah. It can throw us through the loop.

Dustin Nelson (13:07):

That makes things interesting for sure.

Nate Ludvigson (13:08):

Yeah.

Dustin Nelson (13:10):

I’d say maybe an eighth of my jobs are that high water sand. Most of our stuff up in our area is a heavier clay, a lot slower release, but there’s always veins of sand, it seems like too, as you’re going along.

Jamie Duininck (13:24):

What’s your hopes? Either one of you can have, but what’s it like when you look ahead 10 years? [00:13:30] And 10 years is when you’re in your 40s, doesn’t seem like you’d be that old, but I know what 10 years ago felt like. I’m in my 50s now and you start thinking ahead 10 years. You’re maybe thinking ahead to your 50s, but you’re not thinking ahead to your 60s, so you just know you will when you’re in your 50s.

(13:50):

What do you hope for in 10 years for your business? Do you have any plans to involve kids or family, or [00:14:00] how are you thinking about it?

Dustin Nelson (14:03):

So I guess, I kind of think in 10 years, I don’t really have a huge goal. I have small goals working up. I mean, I have a massive goal, that would be nice someday, but my main one, I guess would be just to still enjoy what I’m doing and getting to spend the time with my family and have a relationship with them still.

(14:23):

I’m a workaholic at heart, so my biggest struggle is to make sure that doesn’t come between me and my family and my boys, trying [00:14:30] to remember that they got stuff going on too, you know.

Jamie Duininck (14:32):

Yep.

Nate Ludvigson (14:32):

I have some family. I have a son, I have a daughter and I have some nephews, if any of them want to be part of the farm or the piling, I’d just like them to have the opportunity to do it because-

Karl Guetter (14:44):

They’ll be kicking you out.

Nate Ludvigson (14:46):

That’s fine with me.

Jamie Duininck (14:48):

They’ve already talked to us about that.

Nate Ludvigson (14:50):

I’m sure they have. Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (14:54):

So another thing I kind of was thinking about as I was thinking about visiting with you two guys [00:15:00] is what kind of questions do you have for people like Karl and I that are on the other side of the industry than you guys?

(15:07):

And we’re in the manufacturing space and Karl is a little bit unique from the standpoint of he does farm, so he understands that side, but he gets to have conversations with a lot of guys that are like you from Illinois or from … And I can’t remember, that was Dustin, you said a little bit ago, about 2008 [00:15:30] you had your first piece tiled.

(15:33):

And it’s like guys in Illinois will just be shaking their head when they’re listening to this, like, “2008? We did that in 1958.” And so there’s all these differences that someone like Karl gets to see because he’s out and about a lot, but what kind of questions do you have for us? Anything about …

Dustin Nelson (15:53):

I guess, one of my questions, the first one that pops to my head, is how’s AI going to change [00:16:00] your guys’ business? How’s AI going to change our relationship and how we do business moving forward?

Karl Guetter (16:11):

Oh, my opinion on the way you do business specifically is, I mean, there’s been a lot of work done on the design side, I would say the last couple of years. When Nate and I were got started, we got to witness that first, the advent of GPS [00:16:30] and GPS control, and that was huge.

(16:32):

And then there’s been small things that have happened along the way that have moved the bar a little bit. But from an equipment standpoint, bigger plows, faster plows, all that kind of fun stuff, but nothing really changed the game. So I think the design side. I don’t know exactly how it’s all going to roll in. I’m sure there’s going to be, you can click a button, have a farm designed, but there’s going to be limitations to that, right? So it’s not just going to be a one shop or a one-stop shop-type thing, but I think it would definitely impact that.

(17:00):

[00:17:00] From Prinsco’s relationship to you guys, from our side, the biggest piece, hopefully is it’ll give us the ability to understand what we are and aren’t doing correctly. Right? I mean, do we have the right pieces in place? Are we doing the right things? There’s nothing about making pipe that AI can really do. I mean, I’m sure there’s some things with preventative maintenance and different little pieces of the process that it could touch. But from my [00:17:30] seat on the sales side, the amount of data and how quickly you can get answers will hopefully help us just be in a better position, right?

Jamie Duininck (17:41):

Yeah, I think that’s right. I think ultimately long-term, who knows what … I mean, I was going to say, “Well …” We were going to announce today that we got some robot that’s actually going to tile. But no, I think long-term you are going to see it touch a lot of areas, but I think [00:18:00] the next few years we’ll start to see accuracy and inventories and what we have. I don’t know, how many SKUs do we have, Karl? A couple of thousand?

Karl Guetter (18:13):

More than that.

Jamie Duininck (18:14):

I mean, we have over 50 SKUs just of four-inch pipe when you start talking about narrow slot, and muck pipe, and non-perf, and perf and which length and all that. And so what to make, when to make it, I think those kind of tools will be coming pretty fast [00:18:30] that hopefully are not iterations of, “Oh, this is going to work,” and it doesn’t.

(18:36):

Hopefully it’ll just start to work and we can keep refining and keep refining and it just gets better and better. Those are the types of things I see, and it does what Karl said. Right away, it does all revolve around data, right?

Karl Guetter (18:49):

Speed. I mean, the speed piece is what’s incredible about it, really.

Dustin Nelson (18:53):

Yeah.

Jamie Duininck (18:54):

Got any thoughts? Anything you would … We get to talk quite often, well you do with Karl and [00:19:00] so probably have asked everything you’ve ever wanted to know.

Nate Ludvigson (19:03):

I don’t know about that. On the contractor side of it, you guys run a pretty smooth ship.

Jamie Duininck (19:10):

Thanks.

Dustin Nelson (19:11):

Yeah, it’s definitely a benefit. I do feel like Prinsco’s the top of the line. I mean, when you want Cadillac pipe, I guess I’ve looked at a lot of different ones and then Prinsco’s got a great product. And then on top of it, I can’t say enough about your guys’ service.

(19:29):

On the farm side, we [00:19:30] get so many different types of salesmen. And when you’re looking at delivery and ordering and pre-ordering, you switch over to the pipe side and you’re dealing with ordering pipe and it’s like, “Holy buckets, this is how service is supposed to be.” And I guess, I appreciate that a lot.

Jamie Duininck (19:47):

Yeah. Well, thanks. And I think those are things we will continue to be able to improve on as we get more data and more accuracy with AI’s help. But appreciate the time, [00:20:00] guys and it’s fun to have the opportunity to visit with two guys that actually compete a little bit against each other, but to understand the opportunities there are to learn from each other. And that’s what we hope The Water Table is doing and can do long-term for people that are listening. So appreciate all you do for Prinsco as customers. Appreciate you joining us today.

Dustin Nelson (20:24):

Yeah, appreciate you having us.

Nate Ludvigson (20:26):

Thank you.

Jamie Duininck (20:27):

Thanks.

Podcast Episode 149

First-gen contractors: two paths into drainage

Episode 149 | 20:57 min

With Guests:

Listen Now

Guest Bios

Nate Ludvigson

Dustin Nelson

Karl Guetter

Transcript

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Podcast Episode 149

First-gen contractors: two paths into drainage

Episode 149 | 20:57 min

With Guests:

Listen Now

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Guest Bios

Nate Ludvigson

Dustin Nelson

Karl Guetter

Transcript

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