TerraWise Solutions delivers a complete range of advanced construction technologies. Founded in 2002, the McDonough, Georgia-based company built its reputation by offering the highest-end Leica lasers along with dedicated customer support. Today, the company is recognized as the top authorized Leica Geosystems Machine Control Dealer for all of North America.
After profiling TerraWise Solutions last year, Construction in Focus checked back in this month to learn about the company’s newest offerings.
The business boasts three new products specifically designed for skid steers. TerraWise Solutions has traditionally focused on bigger machines such as bulldozers and excavators, but the team recognized that many customers are using skid steers onsite. “They’re working a lot of small job sites,” says Business Development Manager Matthew Biles. “So, a lot of our customers were looking for solutions for a grading blade or a trimmer blade that could be mounted on a skid steer.”
The company sold a different type of skid steer blade a few years ago, then went back to the drawing board to “work through some of the pain points with those different blades,” and improve them. Through experimentation in the field, the company developed the TerraBlade, TerraTrimmer, and TerraRipper.
The TerraBlade is the world’s first three-dimensional, completely wireless grading attachment. “There’s nothing in the market like that,” says Biles. Also notable is that there are no poorly placed wheels to get in the way. “That’s a really big advantage for contractors. They’re able to get up in corners and small, tight places without having wheels in front of their blade.”
The TerraBlade is known for its adaptability. “You can use it as an eight-foot-wide grading blade,” Biles says. “It has hydraulic wings on the end that are two feet wide each, so if you extend those out, you can make your grading blade all the way up to twelve feet wide. [It is] a really versatile blade. You can use it as just a dozer blade, a box blade where you can have both of those wings closed, and then you can actually use it as a catch and spill method.” For this use, operators “will have one wing closed where it is catching the dirt, but the other side will have the wing open, and it allows the soil to spill out on that side,” he explains.
Both the TerraBlade and the TerraTrimmer can be automated with machine control, which has proven to be a big selling point, as is the quality of the equipment.
“All of our products are American-made and very heavy-duty,” says Biles. “When you look at the TerraTrimmer and the TerraBlade versus some of the other blades out there on the market, most of the [other blades] are not weighing 3,000 pounds. Our solutions are very robust.”
Another new offering is the Tenstar Simulator, a multi-machine simulator that enhances training and safety programs. The company sought out the product in response to market demand. “Some of our customers brought it to our attention, so we started looking into it. We just thought it was really interesting since we’re in the technology world and construction world.”
The solution stands out for several reasons. “With some of the competition, you can only run one machine or just a few machines, where the Tenstar can run a lot of machines—approximately 13 or 14 construction vehicles,” Biles explains. Another point of difference is the ability to link multiple Tenstar units. “You get more than one simulator in the same environment. You can hook them together and you can have different users working in the same environment, and that makes it really stand out from the competition. You can have a customer that—for their safety program—buys three or four of these simulators, and they can connect all three or four of them together, and they can bring workers in and have them working in the same environment as they would be in real life.”
These capabilities greatly simplify the training process. “We hear from all of our customers about what a pain it is to train employees,” he says. Traditional training requires practice on “heavy-duty machines, excavators, and bulldozers, and they eat up crazy amounts of diesel fuel.” There is also the wear and tear on the machines to consider in addition to safety concerns. “It’s rough taking an 18, 19-year-old inexperienced operator and taking them out there and training them on a real machine, on a real site,” Biles says.
The Tenstar Simulator cuts out all of these issues. “They offer a virtual reality world,” he says. “If you’ve never driven an excavator or a bulldozer, it’ll take you all the way from the basics to very advanced movements and advanced operations on the machine.”
Customers are also using the Tenstar Simulator to test new applicants who claim to have experience operating machinery. “A lot of times, they go through the process of hiring these people and wasting time and energy and resources, and then they get them out there in the field, and they’re not what they said on their résumé,” Biles shares. “So, we have a couple of customers that are taking these simulators, and they’re testing new hires before they hire them to make sure they are the operator they say they are.”
Customers are also using the Tenstar Simulator to improve their safety programs. If an employee commits a safety violation in the field, “you can bring them in, put them through certain exercises, and print out those [results] to put in their folder to show that you’ve corrected the infraction from the field.”
Customers are even using the Tenstar Simulator as a recruitment tool. “They’re mobile, so you can move them around in a trailer. Customers load these simulators up and they take them to events and shows and even to high schools and colleges to recruit young kids. So we’ve seen a lot of great things come out of the simulators.”
This is only the beginning. “It’s really an early technology that they’re developing all the time,” Biles says. “We really think the simulators are going to take off within the next two or three years just for safety and insurance purposes, all those aspects.”
HP SitePrint is another notable new offering, a robotic solution that allows digital layouts to be printed directly onto the finished surface. “We just became a dealer for HP SitePrint,” Biles says, “and we’re really excited about this new product.” The solution simplifies the layout process dramatically. “You don’t always have to have a supervisor or somebody coming around and checking points, checking data. You have that data laid out on the floor… So there are no questions about where things go: ‘Where should this be? Where’s my data for this line over here?’ All of it is drawn out and printed.”
The new technology is “going to be a really big game changer,” Biles says. “It’s going to reduce layout and labor cost.”
TerraWise Solutions stands out for its customer service in addition to its innovative, market-leading solutions. “Our service has always been the name of the game for us. Where we shine at TerraWise Solutions is coming in and being a partner with our customers and not just selling them the equipment and walking away.”
Instead, the team is committed to “staying there and training the customer, so we know they know the ins and outs of that equipment and what they’re using it for, and we find that when you train the customer correctly, and they learn the equipment, and they learn what they’re doing, they’re going to come back to you for the next piece of equipment whenever they’re ready. So, it just works out really well for us.”
TerraWise Solutions has just launched a new website to better showcase its offerings, and the next step is to broaden its sales area. The company recently hired Reality Capture Manager Tim Johnson, who has extensive experience in high-definition scanning (HDS), an area that promises lots of growth. “HDS is a new opportunity for us,” says Biles. “Instead of just locally, Tim will be selling nationwide, and we plan on that being a big part of our business.”
With its reputation for superior solutions and service already well established, TerraWise Solutions’ upcoming expansion is sure to be a shining success.
