In the Dirt: Digging Deep in the Low Country

Welcome to the debut of “In the Dirt,” a new blog series from TAG Manufacturing. We’re stepping out of the shop and heading straight to the jobsites to show you exactly where TAG attachments are working, who is running them, and how our equipment holds up when real reputations are on the line.

For our very first feature, we traveled to the coastal plains of Charleston, South Carolina. We stopped by a massive new warehouse project to see a powerful three-way partnership in action: TAG Manufacturing, our trusted local Volvo dealer Ascendum Machinery, and one of the region’s premier civil contractors, Landmark Construction.

The Jobsite: Sitework, Utilities, and Deep, Nasty Conditions

Step onto Landmark Construction’s warehouse site and you are immediately greeted by the realities of coastal civil work. Landmark is handling the complete sitework and underground utility installation for the general contractor, Evans Construction.

In Charleston—fondly known as the Low Country—the dirt isn’t just dirt. It’s a brutal mix of abrasive, shifting sand and a relentless water table.

Michael McGavin, Utility Manager at Landmark Construction states, “Here in Charleston, SC, we are in the low country. So, at Landmark, we specialize and work in the deep nasty conditions with a lot of water coming in at us all the time.”

The Local Support: Ascendum Machinery

To tackle these environments, Landmark turns to Ascendum Machinery, the local Volvo dealer in Charleston, to supply their iron. And when it comes to outfitting those machines with buckets that won’t back down, Ascendum relies heavily on TAG.

Mitch Bailey, Account Manager for Ascendum Machinery, has been partnering with TAG for more than a decade and a half to keep his customers moving.

“TAG has been one of our key accounts as far as providing attachments for us for a number of years. I have been doing business with them for the last 15+ years,” Bailey says. “They make a very fine quality product that we represent.”

In the coastal sand, that build quality is tested every single day. According to Bailey, the feedback from the field is entirely uniform:

“The customers that have purchased TAG are very pleased with them. They like the way the buckets are designed. They like the way that they last in the adverse conditions we are working in. It’s a very sandy condition that we have here, very abrasive. And the TAG product stands up very well in our conditions.”

Driven by the TAG Slogan: Fast. Rugged. Reliable.

At TAG Manufacturing, we build every attachment around three core pillars. On Landmark’s warehouse site, those words aren’t just a marketing slogan—they are operational requirements.

Fast

In the utility game, soil conditions change fast, and fleet management has to keep pace. Chris Varnadore, Director of Equipment and Shop Operations at Landmark Construction, notes that having an attachment that integrates seamlessly makes all the difference in their daily tempo: “The TAG bucket for Ascendum has been a great bucket for what we work in down here in Charleston—sandy soil. It’s been a great bucket, it holds up really well.”

Rugged

When you are moving abrasive sand and fighting water ingress, a poorly constructed bucket will warp, crack, or wear thin in a matter of months. Landmark’s fleet consists of numerous excavators, and they intentionally standardize their heavy iron with TAG steel.

“Our experience with TAG has been great,” says Rick Mixson, President of Landmark Construction Company. “We have bought a lot of excavators over the years and we use TAG’s excavator buckets mainly. When we put an attachment on a machine, what matters most is that the attachment is going to last. It is going to hold up well and not going to cause us any issues in the field.”

Reliable

Unplanned downtime on a major warehouse site can cascade into thousands of dollars in lost productivity. Reliability means never having to think twice about the tool on your stick. “We are yet to have a bucket recalled, a bucket failure,” Mitch Bailey of Ascendum states proudly. “The buckets last a very long time, they are very well constructed.”

The Verdict from the Field

When a company with 61 years of experience tells you your product handles the test, you listen. If you are on the fence about what attachments should be anchoring your fleet, the teams at Landmark and Ascendum have some simple advice.

“I would give them a high recommendation because TAG really engineers and builds a fantastic product,” concludes Landmark President Rick Mixson when asked on advice he would give to someone who has never used TAG attachments. “We have not had any issues with their products, they are built very well and they last.”

Mitch Bailey cuts straight to the point for any dealer or contractor looking to make the switch: “My sales pitch to someone who has never used a TAG product before is look around at the number of customers that are using the TAG product. We are yet to have a bucket recalled, a bucket failure. The buckets last a very long time, they are very well constructed. I just ask you to try one to see what I am speaking of.”

Check back soon for our next stop “In the Dirt,” where we’ll highlight more hard-working crews and the TAG attachments helping them get the job done.

TAG Manufacturing. Fast. Rugged. Reliable.