The Show Begins With Duncan Excavating
SOUTH HILLS, PA… If you have ever attended a Monster Jam Show or a Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship, you probably don’t stop and think about the behind the scenes work it takes to create the dirt tracks at the stadiums. This was the case for me as well, until last month when I had the opportunity to ride along with Jacob Duncan of Duncan Excavating as he and 17 other tri-axle trucks were hauling 26 million pounds of soil to Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh for the Monster Jam Show.
Duncan Excavating is a 3rd generation owned company, located in Western Pennsylvania. Jack Duncan founded the company in 1958. His son Jeff Duncan, who now runs the company after his father’s death, told me the story of how his father purchased a used Caterpillar D4 to level some property he bought to build a house in Pittsburgh. People soon started asking about hiring him for machine work, and Duncan Excavating was the result. Over the years the company evolved into the topsoil supply business as well as commercial excavation, and utility work. But Jeff stresses that the company’s main focus has always been material handling and soil in particular.
Duncan Excavating’s Crafton property consists of 20 acres with approximately 35,000 cubic yards of topsoil on hand. They also run 3 other sites, screening soil in Clinton, PA; Canonsburg, PA; and Oakdale, PA. Each site consists of a trommel screen, a wheel loader and a track loader and sometimes an articulated haul truck, or a self-loading scraper.
They do projects large and small and are able to tailor a product to any given job, including amended soils for bio cells , sand /clay ball field mixing, and any type of mix that is desired.
Duncan Excavating has been screening soil since the early 1970’s. Jeff says that it’s not known for sure if they were the first to screen soil, but they were surely one of the first. To their knowledge, Duncan Excavating is the only “soils only” company in the Pittsburgh area, specializing only in the stripping , handling , processing, screening and delivering to an end user.
Duncan also has the knowledge and expertise to select, mix , and custom tailor amended soils for any application. Duncan Excavating has been a part of many soil reliant entertainment events including the indoor Monster Jam Show, (which they have been supplying and hauling soil since the 1980s and were chosen as the “go to” company in the 1990s), Indoor Arena Freestyle Motocross (which was the foundation for the spectacular tricks performed in present day at the shows), Outdoor Supercross, the first ever Outdoor Monster Jam held this past May at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, and the PBR Rodeo at Consol Energy Center.
They have also supplied soil for testing and television commercials. Have you ever seen the Audi car and Red Bull commercial? It was filmed on Canton Ave., in Pittsburgh and is the worlds’ steepest paved street – Duncan Excavating supplied and hauled all of the soil for that commercial, which was Duncan’s first dealings with Special T tracks. You can view the Audi/Red Bull commercial at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0gyxV4KNxc)
Jeff Duncan is confident that Duncan Excavating’s future is bright with the 3rd generation of the Duncans - his sons Jacob, Jack E., Josh, James and daughter Anna, all of whom operate the heavy equipment as well as know how to do many of the repairs, poised to take over the reins of the company in the future.
I joined the Duncan family and some of their employees at the recent Monster Jam Show in Pittsburgh after they had hauled all of that soil to Acrisure Stadium. We cheered as the trucks performed jumps and tricks over the mounds of dirt. And when the show was over for the spectators and the Monster Jam truck drivers, the crew from Duncan Excavating rolled up their sleeves and began the 12-hour process of hauling all of that soil back out of the stadium. The show truly did begin and end with Duncan Excavating.
Duncan Excavating can be contact at 412-589-0311.