MiD-America offers environmental services to tri-state businesses

It’s a fitting location for this tri-state business that provides a variety of environmental services and consulting to commercial and industrial clients.

“This place is close to home and we usually go to our customers,” Danny Ross, partner, said. “They don’t come out here, so it works for us just fine.”

Ross’ father, Philip, started the business by doing environmental assessments for real estate agents.

“Now the environmental standards are changing daily,” Ross said. “We’re offering our customers a number of services instead of just a couple.”

Those services include emergency response, dry ice blasting/cleaning, industrial tank and sump cleaning, asbestos inspections and abatements, lead inspection and risk assessment, building demolition and safety training.

The diverse offerings keep the company profitable, Ross said.

“We do a lot of educating people,” he said. “There’s a delicate balance between keeping our customers and the regulators happy, but we pride ourselves in finding solutions to the issues.”

Ross said people are more aware of protecting the environment today and that his company can play a role.

“We’re there to meet the customer’s needs and keep them compliant,” he said.

Whitely agrees.

“We’ll do whatever it takes,” he said. “We are pretty diversified because we have to be. The competition can do one piece of what we do, but we will do it all.”

Ross said the company’s diversification efforts evolved over time.

“Customers want the turn key stuff,” he said. “They want us to handle it all from start to finish.”

And what if a customer requests a service that the company does not offer?

“We’ll try just about anything once,” said Dominic Whitely, partner and operations manager. “Our work is very physical and we’re doing the really dirty jobs.”

It’s that “willing to try” response that Ross said contributes to the company’s success.

“We listen to our customers,” he said. “One of them had read about dry ice blasting and asked us if we could do it. We hadn’t heard of it until he asked but now it has become one of our regular service offerings.”

The dry ice blasting process is used to clean a surface.

“Let’s say you want to clean a wall,” Ross said. “We would use dry ice blasting because the ice evaporates. You blast the wall with it and the substances on that wall are knocked off and then it evaporates. If you used sand blasting instead then you’d end up with a less pleasing result because sand leaves a grit.”

The company works with commercial and industrial accounts, though they receive calls from homeowners for asbestos and lead paint services on a regular basis.

“We could do the job,” Ross said. “It’s just that when the homeowner hears our price they can’t understand why it would cost so much for us to come out. We just decided to stick to the businesses that need us.”

One customer willing to pay is Scott Kolb, environmental manager for Dyno Nobel in Carthage.

“Price is a factor for us,” Kolb said. “But it’s not the factor in our decision to use them. I look for people that are honest, don’t ask for change orders and are pleasant to work with.”

Kolb has used MiD-America’s services for eight years.

“They have a vacuum truck that we’ve used and they’ve done some demolition and drilling for us and we do asbestos training together,” he said. “I like that they are local and their equipment is local. I don’t have to pay to get a truck from Springfield over here and their costs aren’t that bad.”

Ross said the company produces annual revenue more than 3 million.

Whitely credits company employees, noting the rigorous hiring process in place.

“Our workers go through extensive physical and pulmonary exams,” he said. “There is drug testing and they must be able to wear a respirator, get trained in asbestos and lead-based paint procedures and do a forty hour OSHA safety class. We have a great staff.”

Ross said “we’re a small company and we’re all out there working. We’ve got a good team that’s on call 24 hours a day, doing whatever it takes.”