Traditional Plumbing and Drain Cleaning Remain the Heart of Behle Inc. as the Company Expands

For nearly 30 years, Behle Inc. has been doing the kind of plumbing work that keeps homes, businesses and institutions in the Ames, Iowa, area running: clearing clogged drains, repairing failing sewer lines, responding to plumbing emergencies and keeping water and wastewater systems flowing as they should.

That work began with a Roto-Rooter franchise in 1997, and it remains at the center of the company today. Over the years, Behle Inc. has expanded well beyond traditional plumbing and drain cleaning, adding pipe lining, excavation, septic services, grease trap cleaning and other water and wastewater specialties. But despite the growth and increasingly sophisticated equipment, plumbing remains the company’s foundation — and its most reliable source of work.

“Roto-Rooter is our bread and butter,” says Thomas Behle, 25, son of company founder Randy Behle and manager of the company’s pipe lining division.

That foundation has also helped Behle Inc. build a broader service model. A routine plumbing call for a clogged drain, for example, can uncover a damaged sewer line that needs to be repaired or lined. A commercial plumbing customer may also need grease trap service. A failing underground line can lead to excavation or trenchless work.

“We have a lot of competition, but the best thing we have going for us is we offer so many services and are trying to perfect them,” Behle says. “We are staying busy because we are good at what we do.”

And staying busy may be just the beginning. With 31 employees and an established lineup of plumbing and water-related services, Behle Inc. is looking beyond its current four-county Roto-Rooter territory in Iowa. Expansion into additional Iowa counties — and eventually neighboring states — is part of the plan.

For Behle, that growth is built on a simple premise: Start with good plumbing work, serve customers well and build from there.

BREAD AND BUTTER

The company began in 1997 when Randy Behle bought a Roto-Rooter franchise after working for another franchise-holder. Today, the venerable national plumbing company franchise remains “the heart and soul” of Behle Inc., according to Thomas Behle.

Not only do the plumbing franchise services have the deepest roots in the company, but Roto-Rooter also feeds work to other company divisions. A service call for a clogged drain, for example, could lead to the discovery of a pipe that needs to be replaced or lined.

The Roto-Rooter franchise is limited to four counties in Iowa: Boone, Carroll, Greene and Story. But Behle Inc. is trying to expand the footprint by winning franchise rights to other Iowa counties. Because Ames is centrally located in Iowa, acquisition of other counties in any direction will be logistically feasible, Behle says.

There is no shortage of work: The Roto-Rooter franchise serves both residential and commercial customers, as well as institutional entities such as Iowa State University. The university’s 30,000 students and faculty constitute about half of Ames’ population.

TRENCHLESS TOOLS

The company’s other divisions include pipe lining, which was formed in 2007 and which Thomas Behle oversees; traditional excavation of faulty pipe for repair or replacement; grease trap cleaning for commercial kitchens; and septic system pumping, repair or replacement. Of the company’s 31 employees, 23 are field crew members spread among the divisions, all of them specialists in their respective areas. The pipe lining division is the largest.

Behle Inc.’s solution for any corroded or cracked pipe is usually a NuFlow CIPP product. A target pipe is first inspected using a RIDGID camera and flushed with either a Harben trailered jetter (4,000 psi) or a truck-mounted Sewer Equipment unit, which can push out 60 gpm from a 1,300-gallon tank. The company also has four Jetters Northwest Brute cart jetters (3,500 psi).

After the liner is installed, customers are given several choices for curing. Ambient curing is the least complicated, of course, but also the slowest, requiring eight to 10 hours. A thermal treatment can be completed in two hours, whereas a UV cold cure is complete in as few as 10 minutes and produces the most uniform lining.

“UV is very fast, but which curing method you use can depend on what you’re lining,” Behle says. “I would say 65 to 70% of all the linings we do are UV cured, but we do a lot of ambient too.”

Behle Inc. also offers an epoxy spray pipe repair solution, but it’s an outlier choice of customers.

Another trenchless solution, pipe bursting, is handled by the company’s excavation division under the management of Behle’s brother, Randy Behle Jr. The company considers bursting a bad pipe a last resort.

“We pipe burst if we cannot do anything else,” Thomas Behle says, estimating the company performs only 10 to 20 bursts a year. A TRIC Tools bursting system is employed.

The lining division, on the other hand, is inserting lining in underground pipe “every day,” according to Behle. The usual diameter of a lined pipe is 3, 4 or 6 inches, but the company gets calls to line pipes anywhere from 2 inches in diameter to 14 inches. If some of the larger infrastructure becomes a little unwieldy for Behle Inc. crew members, the company calls on contracting partners for assistance.

While the trenchless pipe lining work already is offered across Iowa, expansion of the service area is in the works. Company founder Randy Behle started a CIPP contracting firm in the neighboring state to the west, naming it NuFlow Nebraska. The plan is for Behle Inc. to acquire that company this year. Once the acquisition is complete, expansion of lining services into two or three other adjacent states is also anticipated.

“We are focusing on the pipe lining,” Thomas Behle says. “We have two full-time lining crews and are looking to expand into other states. I think that’s pretty cool.”

SERVICE SAVANTS

While lining pipe is the company’s focus, it is not its only busy division. Eight years ago, Behle Inc. purchased a long-established septic services company called River to River. When Behle graduated from high school in 2017, he came aboard the company full time and for five years managed River to River, a name that implies the company serves all of Iowa. The Mississippi River is the eastern border of the state; the Missouri and Big Sioux rivers define the western border.

“Everything to do with septic, we can do,” Behle says.

To accomplish such work, the company owns three mini-excavators and one skid loader, all Bobcats. It also operates several International or Freightliner medium-duty pumper trucks with 2,500- or 3,500-gallon tanks and a tractor-trailer tanker with a 6,000-gallon tank. The trucks’ pumps are from Advance Pump, an Iowa manufacturer.

Iowa being a rural state with urban pockets here and there, septic tank systems still serve a major chunk of the population. Behle Inc. has hundreds of maintenance and service contracts with residential and commercial customers, with up to a half-dozen or more septic calls per day.

“We stay busy,” Behle says.

The company also cleans and services tiles and pipes in irrigated fields on Iowa farms.

The other focus of Behle Inc. crews is grease trap service — the vital function of cleaning out accumulated FOG in retention systems of commercial kitchens. Removing the accumulated byproducts and cleaning filters keeps the grease out of sewer lines where it can coagulate and eventually block the flow or cause environmental issues where it empties. Behle Inc. can call on one of its Advance Pump units for pumping, but it also has two Guzzler hydrovac trucks with 16-cubic-yard tanks and a trailered Godwin (Xylem) transfer pump.

“Anything that needs [to be] pumped — septic, grease, dirt, waste — we can do it with the equipment we have,” Behle says.

ANY HOUR

In addition to providing the gamut of water and wastewater services, Behle Inc. prides itself on being readily available for customers. Day and night, water keeps flowing into drainage pipes, and sometimes issues occur at inconvenient times. So Behle Inc. offers 24/7 emergency service for clogged lines and other plumbing and drain failures. Customers know they can call any hour, and they do.

“We have two or three guys on call every night,” Behle says. “I would say maybe only two nights a week they don’t get a call.”

Some calls are residential, such as when guests arrive at a home and a partly clogged drainline suddenly can’t handle the extra volume. Some are commercial, maybe a night crew discovering a broken line in the warehouse that needs to be fixed by morning. And others are industrial, where a plumbing failure jeopardizes production.

“We do a lot of emergency work for industrial customers,” Behle says.

The whole company is ready to respond as necessary to emergencies, that being the only appropriate response, Behle says. For example, recently Behle says that his brother-in-law, Adam McDowell, the company’s operations manager, had to take an unplanned trip over the weekend after a good customer “out west” called: The customer discovered a system that urgently needed a big hydrovac cleaning job.

A TRUE TEAM

An underlying strength of the organization, Behle says, is the quality of employees the company has been able to attract and retain.

“This is a team deal,” he says. “We have good crews and management. If everyone does his or her part, everything will keep turning as it should. This is the best team we have ever had.”

Behle says the company is benefiting from employee retention, with several longtime team members in key positions. How does the company create loyalty?

“We work at it every day,” Behle says, mentioning end-of-year profit sharing. “Besides Christmas parties, company picnics and other get-togethers, we often hang out together outside of work. We do not want a corporate feel to the company.”