For Chris Varga, owner of Varga Custom Concrete & Excavating, the difference between a profitable day and a grueling one often comes down to minutes. The masonry and site prep markets are unforgiving like that. But that’s not enough for the intrepid Varga; he always ups the ante, taking the jobs others call “crazy.”
Recently, Varga’s team took on a job few others in Northwest Ohio wanted. The massive 150-foot retaining wall Varga built, had him perched on a precarious, eroding hillside in his 12.5-ton excavator, with an Ottawa River tributary running just below. After digging down 20 feet, he had to place 18 vertical feet of block to shore up the customer’s home property, a $350,000 investment. It took two months of dangerous difficult work.
To maintain peak efficiency, Varga and his team turned to a variable center hydraulic coupler. The coupler was the proverbial (and actual) linchpin. 
Varga Custom Concrete & Excavating
A (Life)line of Sight
The Great Black Swamp is what they used to call the land just south of Lake Erie. It’s a farmer’s dream; an excavator’s challenge. Working on the steep, loamy banks of the Ottawa River and its tributaries requires power and stability.
“Visibility was absolutely horrendous,” Varga recalled of his recent project in Ottawa Hills. One way he addressed that was by shedding the extra weight and bulk of the bucket to open sightlines and reduce the risk of the machine "teetering.”
His setup included a dual-pin locking system on his coupler that provided an extra layer of protection, ensuring attachments remained securely engaged on two pins. It also included an automatic front lock that engaged the moment the rear jaw activated, negating the chance of the bucket falling off even if a pin was missed.
Varga Custom Concrete & Excavating
Making the Impossible Possible
The project required repeated rotation between digging footers, dumping stone and gravel and placing 4,500-pound blocks.
“I could not do this job without putting the bucket on backwards to be able to reach out further,” Varga said of operating his bucket in reverse.
The physical toll of manual changes combined with the tough terrain would have made the project impossible without the coupler.
“We jump out of that machine all day long. With being able to unhook the bucket and grab your rigging, hook it to the loop in the back and bring your blocks around, and still have your bucket sitting there,” Varga said. “With this, the operator is not getting beat up.”
Varga Custom Concrete & Excavating
In a single long workday, the excavator bucket was removed or flipped 180-degrees up to 30 times. The new coupler saved his crew 10 minutes per change. That’s a daily savings that peaked at five hours per day, or about 50% time saved.
“All told, each time you do it, it adds up,” Varga said. “That’s a lot of time.”
It was also maintenance free, with no oil or lubrication needed during the shift, allowing crews to focus entirely on the job at hand. It’s not hyperbole to say the innovation revolutionized Varga’s business.
Coordinating Businesses: Concrete and Excavating
Success isn't just about pouring more slabs for Varga’s business. Once he mastered concrete, he started taking the toughest excavating jobs, the “before” to the concrete industry’s “after.” Both are about having the “brainpower and skill to be able to see where things need to go,” Varga said. The difference is “concrete work puts 10 years on a man.”
Excavation and site prep, when using the right equipment, can help extend a contractor’s working years. Varga, 48, said he personally sees it giving him four or five more good years before retirement.
For 26 years, Varga has always had his mind one step ahead of the work in front of him. He’s seen his business transform from a “two guys in a truck” concrete-only operation to the excavating expert the competitors come out just to watch tackle white-knuckle jobs.
Varga Custom Concrete & Excavating
Varga likes to push himself on jobsites where a single misstep could lead to disaster. And with 75% of his work on residential properties, the safety of his customers (and their families and neighbors) is always top of mind.
The Ottawa River project was just the start for Varga Custom Concrete & Excavating. For Varga, it’s about the satisfaction of the work; he isn’t about to shy away from projects other contractors find too daunting. Maybe someday, he imagines, that will even be designing and building championship golf courses, complete with all the challenging site prep and decorative concrete. A builder can dream — and with the right equipment for the job, even the most challenging jobs can get done.
